


Roots

by Anythingtoasted



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Dean/Cas Big Bang Challenge 2013, Gore, M/M, Schmoop
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-21
Updated: 2013-10-21
Packaged: 2017-12-30 02:29:17
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 38,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1012971
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anythingtoasted/pseuds/Anythingtoasted
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“After the apocalypse, Dean, Sam and Castiel settle into a gentler life, and Dean starts to make peace with the things that plagued him before 2009. Tentatively, carefully, he starts getting better.<br/>But something lives in the woods, in the house; something calls to him in his dreams that crosses the lines between waking and sleep. Whilst trying to reconcile himself with himself, Dean finds himself wondering if the things he’s managed to build are really slipping away, or if the whole thing is just in his head.”</p><p>My submission for the Dean/Cas Big Bang 2013.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Wow. 
> 
> I don't even know what to say. I began this fic last september, just after finishing season seven; it is finally finished, more than a full year later. 
> 
> It has been a labour of love, it has been a plain labour, it has been wonderful and hideous and has gone through almost as many revisions as it has words. It is the longest thing I have ever written, the longest I have ever stuck with a single story, and something I now hold close to my heart. 
> 
> It is far from perfect, but it has a piece of my soul in it, so I hope you'll forgive its faults. 
> 
> Huge thanks to my artist, [Martha](http://curseboxes.tumblr.com), who is not only an incredibly talented human being but also one of the sweetest girls I have ever had the fortune to know; a wonderful friend, troll-fetishist and someone I feel honoured to count among my friends. I would have trusted the art for this project in no other hands but hers. 
> 
>  
> 
> ****  
> [♥♥ Art Masterpost is here ♥♥](http://momalish.livejournal.com/1716.html#cutid1%C2%A0)  
>   
> 
> Also huge thanks to my friend and beta-reader (and cheerleader) [Julia](http://mishachester.tumblr.com), who stuck with me through my whining and my constant pestering and my useless lacks in self esteem. Julia is one of my best friends, and when I began this fic that friendship was only just beginning, as well; I am so lucky to have written this with her at my side, because without her it never would have been finished, let alone finished the way it is now. Beta-reading aside, I am also just incredibly lucky to know her; she's one of the greatest friends I have ever had. 
> 
> Thanks as well to everyone who has been supportive throughout this project; you made it what it was. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy it ♥

“Dean?”

He blinked, hands tensed around the coffee cup. Then he breathed. “Morning,” he grinned; Castiel looked him over with a critical eye as he made his way, busy, around the kitchen.

Castiel stood by the sink, rinsing out a cup of his own as steam rose in billowing clouds from his kettle, snug by the stove. “Did you fall asleep? Are you alright?”

“Yeah, fine,” he blinked again.

“You don’t sound it.” Castiel put his cup in the sink, turned around and went to him. He stood across the kitchen from Dean, fixing him with that usual, inscrutable gaze.  

“How would _you_ know?” Dean grinned as he said it; Castiel wrinkled his nose.

“Touché.” He turned when the kettle, always timely, started to whistle. Head low, Castiel lifted it from the stove, retrieved his cup from the sink and put them both on the counter in front of Dean. Then he went to one of the cupboards, pulled a teabag from its box and dropped it deftly in the cup.

It was weird to see how human nature came so _naturally_ to Castiel, now. Of course he still wasn’t really up on his pop culture; didn’t have a chance in hell when Dean asked him to name a song that was playing on the radio (a game that Dean loved and Castiel _hated)_ and, as he said himself, he wasn’t great at the nuances-of-human-interaction thing, just yet – but sometimes Dean thought he could watch him all day. Performing little tasks, like using the remote to flip TV channels, or buttering toast, which he was weirdly obsessed with. His movements were deliberate, serious and strange, but _human_ and Dean, though he was a little embarrassed to admit it, was often rapt. He took a sip of his coffee and it burned him.

“So you _are_ alright?” Castiel said, voice a little faraway as he poured boiling water. “You’ve been sleeping?” he asked, with a glance at Dean. He laughed in response.

“Yeah, Cas, like a baby.” It was true; he’d woken this morning with no trouble at all, blissed-out in bed, stretched diagonally across the whole of his double like a dog. He hadn't had dreams since what happened five years ago, since they put Lucifer in his place, and all this weird, 'normal' stuff had started. He set the coffee down to let it cool, and folded his arms, leaning them on the counter. "Is Sam around?"

"He's in town." Cas finished making his tea and drank it immediately; apparently one of the perks of being an angel included asbestos-mouth. "He went to the library.”

"What, is something going on?"

Castiel frowned, amused. "He's getting books for his degree, remember? We had this conversation last night."

"Oh," Dean frowned, a pinching sensation in the back of his head. The three of them had been downstairs last night because _Pulp Fiction_ was on and Castiel had never seen it. Dean had insisted that they stay up to watch it, and somehow they'd gotten talking about how they couldn't afford Sam's books, and maybe Dean would start taking shifts at Bobby's. “Okay. So what’re _you_ doing today?”

Across the counter from him, Castiel lifted the cup to his lips again and rolled his shoulders, long and easy. One of the first things to come to him was shrugging, like he was built for it; Dean still found it sort of funny to watch. “Father Woodlow finally agreed to meet with me. I think we can really get somewhere.”

Dean grinned slowly. “He threw stuff at you last time.”

Castiel shrugged again. “He’s had time now to see how impolite that was of him.”

“You know you can’t change these people’s minds.”

Castiel looked at Dean over the lip of his cup. “You changed _mine_ , didn’t you?” his smile was wry, satisfied; Dean rolled his eyes.

“I’m just saying, if he sets you on fire or tries to exorcise you again, don’t come crying to me.”

Castiel finished his tea and rose from the counter, rinsed it out in the sink and then put it on the draining board. He was so painfully _neat;_ Dean hated to admit it, but it sometimes irked him. “When have you ever known me to cry?”

Dean laughed, as Castiel turned to go. He put his hand on Dean’s shoulder before he left; the warm, firm weight of it was strange, though he’d known it hundreds of times before; moreso, when Castiel squeezed gently. “Don’t… _rattle around the house_ alone, today. Go see Bobby, if you’re bored.”

Dean nodded at him, brow raised. “Don’t baby me, Cas _._ ”

Castiel let him go, laughing gently, turned without a word, and left – but he caught himself on the way out of the front door. “I’ll see you later, Dean.”

“Doing better, Cas!” he shouted back, and he heard Castiel’s soft, amused huff as he shut the door behind him.

Dean was strangely proud; it was the third day in a row that Cas had actually remembered to say goodbye. He still didn’t understand the point – _Why would I say goodbye, if I’m just going to see you in a few hours? –_ but he tried, as best he could. Something warm roiled in Dean’s stomach; probably the coffee.

\---

He felt strange, knocking on Bobby’s door. His whole childhood there was either no time for it or his dad was the one doing the knocking, his big hand planted firmly over Dean’s five-year-old shoulders, prepared to shove him into Bobby’s house with only a couple of terse words. Standing there, thirty six years old, the only one waiting on the doorstep, he felt shockingly older. That feeling soon faded, though, when Bobby’s aged face appeared in the doorway.

“Oh. It’s you,” he grumbled, and Dean followed him in, grinning. Bobby was never pleased to see him; in fact, if he ever was, it usually meant something was wrong. Bobby shuffled ahead of him, leading the way to the kitchen, where he went straight for the fridge. He pulled himself a beer from inside it, then paused, glanced up at Dean, and shook his head. “Oh, right,” he shrugged, closed the fridge, and sat down without offering Dean anything at all. “So what’re you here for?”

Dean moved to sit opposite him and almost laughed (not for the first time) at the way he and Bobby’s movements mirrored eachother. He felt a sudden rush of affection, of relief, towards Bobby, but decided not to mention it – something told him Bobby wasn’t much in the mood for that kind of talk. “We’re running a bit short back at the house. Cas said you might have work.”

Bobby raised his eyebrows; they disappeared briefly underneath the brim of his hat. “There’s always _work._ Just depends what you’re looking for, in particular.”

“The cars. _Mechanic_ work,” Dean clarified, then stopped. “Unless there’s a hunt going on that you didn’t tell me about.”

Bobby waved him off irritably. “There’s no hunt, boy. You don’t think I’d have told you? The way you slump around when you’ve not killed anything in a few weeks? It’s enough to make a grown man cry.” His face was stony, though, and Dean chuckled gently at him.

“Can’t blame me for trying. You think I could take a couple of shifts in the yard?”

Bobby glanced towards the window, at the heaps of cars outside. “Sure. Why not. This for Sammy’s benefit?”

Dean nodded. Bobby’s face relaxed slightly; Dean didn’t think he was capable of smiling after so many years of looking like a dog shit right under his nose, but this was close enough. “Good. He’s doing alright? Gonna be a lawyer or somethin’, right?”

“I think so,” Dean looked down at the table, then back at Bobby. He smiled. “You should come by the house sometime.”

Bobby’s mouth twitched. “Maybe. Don’t want to get in the way of you boys.” He took a long pull on his beer, then put it back on the table. “Still shacking up with the angel?” he said, with only the slightest edge of tentativeness; he still didn’t say Castiel’s name, but even asking after him was such an improvement that Dean could hardly complain.

“Doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere any time soon.”

Bobby nodded slowly. “Maybe I _will_ stop by. Lord knows you boys can’t look after yourselves for a god damned minute without my help.”

Dean felt that strange rush of affection towards him again; a sort of soft-centred agony, a gladness that Bobby was there. It didn’t seem like the old bastard would ever really be gone, and all Dean could think was, _Good_.

 He snorted and pushed himself up from the table. “C’mon, then. You gonna show me the ropes in this place, or what?”

Bobby mumbled something under his breath about Dean _already_ knowing the ropes and _can’t he just leave an old man in peace_ – but he got up from the table, too, bottle forgotten, and led the way out to the yard.

\---

By the time he got back to the house Dean was starving, but pleased. He pulled his car into the driveway and recognised Sam’s after only a moment’s pause; the little blue eco-friendly thing had made Dean collapse with laughter when he’d first seen it, but the longer it sat in the driveway, the more it seemed perfect for Sam. He patted it, half-affectionately, as he went into the house.

The sound of the TV greeted him, as well as the familiar rumble of the kettle boiling (again). Castiel was standing in the kitchen with a cup of tea held close to his face, and he nodded in greeting when Dean came through from the front; Sam was sat on the couch with his arms spread out over the back of the sofa, watching some Animal Planet thing that Dean couldn’t even summon the energy to make fun of. He stood at the back of the couch and leaned on it with both hands, watching with vague interest as the screen showed shots of the ocean. “Sharks?” he asked, half-curious, and Sam turned to look at him.

“It’s about the Great Barrier Reef, and how it’s being destroyed.”

Dean tried not to let it show as his interest slipped away. “Huh,” he said distantly. “Get what you needed from the library?”

Sam hummed. “Some stuff, yeah.”

 “Cool. You doing anything tonight?”

Sam turned to look at him and smiled incredulously. “I was just gonna stay in, Dean. Why?”

He didn’t know. Ever since he’d sat in the kitchen this morning he’d felt strangely connected to everything. Not in the bullshit, hippie, everyone-is-part-of-everything kind of way, but to his family. To Sam. To Bobby. To Cas. He wanted them around him, weird though it was; they were always around him, _always_ near, to the extent that sometimes he just wanted to be left alone; but today was different. Today he’d spent the whole day with Bobby, just talking about cars, and he’d never been happier. He had no answer for Sam that wouldn’t make him sound like a complete fucking idiot, though. He mumbled, “No reason,” and went into the kitchen where Castiel still stood, cup now empty, next to the sink. He smiled when Dean entered.

“You went to see Bobby?”

Dean nodded and dug in the cabinets above the counters in search of something to eat; there was almost nothing there, just the shitty granola-based low-fat-low-carb-low-taste cereals that Sam liked, and Castiel’s damned teabags. Did he own anything at all in this house?

He could feel Castiel’s eyes on him as he blustered around; he opened the fridge and peered inside, but there was nothing; no beer, no meat; just milk and eggs and the last dregs of butter. He lifted his head from inside it to glare across at Sam, whose eyes were still fixed on the TV.

“There’s no food in this house!” he called through, and Sam lifted a hand boredly, not even looking.

“Whose fault is that?” he called back, as if that finished it, and Dean looked incredulously at Castiel.

“Are you hearing this?”

Castiel looked mostly unconcerned. “We can go tonight, if you like. It _is_ your turn.”

Dean knew better than to argue; Castiel had the memory of an obnoxious supercomputer, and testing him would only end up pissing the both of them off. He sighed heavily. “Fine. Fine. You coming with?”

Castiel set his cup down and nodded, as Dean dug in his jeans to check that he had the car keys. He grabbed Sam’s wallet off the counter and motioned for Castiel to follow him out to the car, saying goodbye to Sam as he went and getting a half-hearted, slightly amused, “Have fun!” in reply.

\---

They’d lived together (in a way) for about three years now, and Dean still hadn’t learned his lesson about taking Castiel shopping.

Granted, he wasn’t as annoying as Sam, who frowned worriedly whenever Dean picked up something that wasn’t green and organic, but his brand of irritation was still there; Dean tightened his grip on the cart as Castiel stopped, again, and picked up a box of tampons. “I still don’t understand why the government insists on making women pay for these. It seems unfair,” he peered at the box as if the answer would be written on it; Dean snatched it out of his hand.

“Either way, Cas, it’s nothing to do with us.”

Castiel walked alongside him, effectively silenced (for the minute). He folded his arms behind his back; Dean still wasn’t used to seeing him in ‘civilian’ clothes. This very second he was in a blue sweater and jeans – if it wasn’t for the stiff way he walked, and the way his eyes scanned absolutely every single fucking thing in the store, he’d be indiscernible from the humans around him. “Why do you even come on these trips, Cas? You don’t _eat.”_

Castiel looked at him. “I eat sometimes.”

“Yeah, once a week or so. Not enough to justify groceries.”

“I _like_ doing this with you.”

Dean frowned, embarrassed. “Well, I dunno why.”

Castiel said nothing in response; just kept walking alongside him quietly, hands clasped together. Eventually, he broke the silence again. “How was Bobby?”

“Fine. Pissy as usual, but fine. Think he’s getting soft in his old age.”

“Did he have anything for you to do?” They passed rows and rows of multi-coloured cereal boxes, and Dean grabbed at least five, if only to spite Sam’s all-natural shit.

“Yeah, he said he could get me in for a few shifts a week, just doing stuff around the yard. I think he missed me,” Dean grinned, but Castiel seemed to take him seriously, and nodded. “He asked about you,” Dean told him, and Castiel cocked his head, interested.

“What did you tell him?”

Dean wheeled the cart around a corner and looked into it, rather than at Castiel. “Told him you were still with us, and that it looked like you were sticking around.” He didn’t dare ask, _are you?_ He wasn’t sure which answer he’d be hoping for. Castiel smiled; Dean heard it in his voice when he replied.

“That’s good.” He said, quietly, and followed Dean as he went down the aisle, picked up a six-pack and then went straight for the counter, unwilling to draw out the errand any longer. On the way home, in the car, neither of them said much; Castiel stared out of the window, as was his usual, and Dean kept his eyes on the road, just thinking. He’d never really considered Castiel going away before; it just seemed like a given that he would stay with them. When you stop the apocalypse with a guy, it’s pretty safe to say that the two of you are at least _friends –_ but he didn’t know, for sure. Cas was impenetrable; the moment Dean thought he had a read on him, it turned out that he didn’t, after all. As if in answer, Castiel turned to look at him just as they pulled into the driveway.

“Dean,” he said, just as Dean was fumbling with the car door; he turned back.

“Yeah?”

“I _am_ sticking around,” he said, and Dean looked at him dumbly before he laughed.

“Glad to hear it,” he touched Castiel on the shoulder and then seemed to get stuck; he didn’t know how long to hold it or how to pull back. He sat there with his hand over Castiel’s warm shoulder, fingers curled, before he pulled away and got out of the car as fast as he could; and the whole time Cas just looked at him, and smiled.

They went into the house together, Dean with as many bags as he could carry, Castiel with considerably more. He pushed the door open with his shoulder and grinned as he entered the house, confidence slowly returning.

“So did he throw stuff? The priest guy?”

Castiel snorted as he followed. “He’s lucky I’m more benevolent than I used to be. Six years ago, I’d have thrown things back, and they’d have gone _through_ him.”

\---

_He dug his hands into muscle, scrabbling with his fingers at a section of skin-bark. He peeled back the rough flesh from his flesh, strange exoskeleton, fingers blunt, nails bloody._

_Around him the trees rose like towers, triumphant. His skin was red-pink beneath, fresh, and it stung._

_\---_

 

“Who bought beer?” Sam asked him on Saturday morning, after coming back from his run. Dean, on the couch, half-interested in a rerun of _Smallville,_ looked at him oddly.

“Cas did,” he deadpanned, incredulous. “ _I_ did, sasquatch. Who else?”

Sam stared at him in silence, eyebrows drawn together. “De- Aren’t you giving your speech on Monday?”

“Speech?” Dean asked him blankly. He was about to laugh – about to tell Sam he had no fucking idea what he was talking about, when he remembered the meeting; years of meetings.

Being pissy and anxious and not sleeping; all for Sam, even though he sometimes still looked at a bar and quivered with lust.

Sessions where he’d talked about his _feelings;_ or worse, about his Dad.

 Relapsing.

 Relapsing again.

 The coin on his bedside table.

Apologising to Sam, to Bobby, to Cas.

 Calling old girlfriends and making amends; keeping a fucking _diary_ which still sat, unread by any eyes but his own, at the bottom of his closet.

It was such a huge chunk of his life that when it came rushing back, full-force, full-colour, he felt dizzy. Sam just stood looking at him, and shame crept so confidently up his spine that he wanted to bash his head against the fucking coffee table. “Fuck. I forgot.”

Sam just looked at him from the mouth of the kitchen, expression drawn and worried; maybe even a little _resigned_. “Dean, if you’re slipping because of the pressure, I can call Lauren.”

“No. No, Sammy, seriously, I appreciate the concern but if I was going to start again, don’t you think I’d have hid it better?” he tried for a grin, and got nothing in response. “I _forgot_ , Sam. I know that’s crazy, believe me, but – there it is. Throw it out, if you want.”

Sam breathed deep. “Three years is a long time, Dean. You know I’m – _we’re_ – proud of you, right?”

“I know.” He _did_ know.

“Alright.” Sam laughed in relief. “Sorry, I was just – you know. It was hard –“ he shook his head, looked down, went to the refrigerator and pulled the beer out; set about popping the tabs and pouring them away, one by one. “Trust Cas not to say anything. Didn’t he try to stop you?”

“No.”

“He’s too easy on you. I mean I know he wasn’t around a lot when you were – you know - at your worst, but I tried explaining.”

“He probably didn’t think. Give him a break.”

“I know. I know,” Sam sighed. “I’m proud of you, Dean.”

Dean had no words for a response; he hummed, instead. The sink made a low, hesitant gurgle.

\---

He sat on the hood of the impala that night, turning the coin that said ‘ _to thine own self be true’_ on it. Cheesy as hell, but Sammy had picked it, not him.

Three years sober. Three years of bitching and whining and snapping at Sam. Sam had bought him the coin in January, as a reminder; he carried it around a lot at first, and then eventually the coin ended up on his bedside table, except on a bad day, when he’d keep it in his pocket.

It wasn’t a bad day, today; just a strange one.

It was cold outside, so much that when Castiel appeared next to him, he near jumped a foot in the air. Castiel just looked at him, level and cool, knees drawn up and his hands clasped between them. Dean turned to him, trying to disguise the fact that he’d almost shit himself in surprise.

“Been awhile since you’ve done that.”

Castiel just laughed; but he sobered pretty quickly. “Sam’s worried about you. And he’s not exactly in the best of spirits with me.”

“He’s mad about the beer?”

Castiel nodded. “It’s strange. I didn’t even consider that anything was out of place.”

Dean rolled his shoulders, aware of how close Castiel was sitting to him; they were pressed from shoulder to hip, and Cas seemed to think nothing of _that,_ either.  “Yeah, well, you weren’t the one picking it up. I dunno what I was doing. Old habits die hard, I guess,” But that wasn’t it, either. His memory had been so spotty the past few days; it _was_ strange. Maybe he needed to stop staying up so late, watching stupid movies on the SyFy channel. They were never any good, anyway.

He sighed, and settled himself more comfortably on the car; Castiel reached over and took the coin from his hands; he turned it over, reading.

“Your brother loves you very much.”

Dean barked a laugh. “Tell me something I don’t know. If he loved me less, maybe he’d stop trying to get me to go _jogging._ ”

To his surprise, Castiel laughed, too. “Your brother also clearly loves a challenge.”

“Sure does,” Dean cast his eyes heavenward, but felt weird about it with Castiel close by; could he see things up there that Dean couldn’t? Was heaven even ‘up there’? Or was it some kind of weird insubstantial thing, like another plane, or another dimension?

He really did have to cool it with the low budget sci-fi flicks.

 “Hey, Cas?”

Castiel hummed in response.

“Talked to your brothers and sisters lately?”

Castiel laughed softly. “You worry too much.” He nudged Dean gently with his shoulder, and Dean was so startled by the _humanity_ of the gesture that he almost fell off the car. “I’m not going anywhere, Dean. Since I started living with you boys, I’ve become something of a social outcast; but they’ll not make a pariah of me yet.” He looked up, too, at the stars, and Dean resisted the temptation to ask. “I’m still in contact where it counts.”

“So you can do whatever you want now?”

Castiel nodded. “Within reason.”

“Huh.” He turned to Castiel, and smiled, and received one in return.

  He still felt that strange ache, that weird almost-melancholy around his family; it had started earlier in the week and never let up. Around Sam, around Bobby, around Cas – even when they were being pissy or irritating or critical – he was just so grateful that they were there at all. Here, though, the surge came with something else. Castiel nudged him with his shoulder again, and Dean nudged him back. It was like ramming his shoulder into a brick wall, but he did it all the same. “Dick,” he muttered, laughing. “That’s good, though, right?” he let the rest go unspoken; _you’re happy, right? This is what you want?_

Castiel grinned properly then, at Dean and then at the sky. “Yes.” He said, and that was all; but it was enough.

_\---_

_He wandered, calling the name, over and over. The canopy above echoed with his voice; squat black birds fled at the sound, wings scraping the air like blades._

_Sometimes he forgot that he was alone._

_\---_

Dean woke sated and lazy, just like every day that week; it was even _early_ when he went downstairs, so much so that Sam was in the kitchen in his jogging gear, looking like a complete asshole, pants _way_ too tight. Sam pulled an apprehensive face when his brother entered the room.

“Look, if you’re going to make fun of me, I’m going for a shower, okay?”

Dean turned on his best shit-eating grin. “Now I know why all the old ladies in town get up so early,” he whistled. Sam’s face turned dark as thunder.

“Shut up. At least my heart’s not in trouble.” He stomped off, and Dean called up the stairs after him.

“Hey! Neither is mine!” he touched a hand to his chest. He was _fine._ Hunting was better exercise than all that fucking destination-less running, anyway. Best cardio he could imagine. Good for the _soul._

He chuckled to himself and set about making an actual, real breakfast; made enough for Sam and Cas, too, even though Cas barely ate at all, and Sam was getting closer to ‘pretentiously vegan’ with each passing day. By the time he was done Sam was showered, dressed, and towelling his hair dry in the kitchen as he watched Dean cook.

“That all for you?” he asked, and Dean shot him a glare.

“If you keep being a dick about it, yeah.”

There was silence in the small, clean kitchen for a few minutes; Dean busied himself moving from counter to counter. There was a pile of dirty plates leaning next to the sink, which Castiel would no doubt take care of, unasked; but otherwise the place was pristine, just like the rest of the house. Dean couldn’t remember ever cleaning it; he wondered idly when the others would make him start pulling his weight, then tried to forget it. He was working, Sam was working, Castiel was – talking to religious leaders, working towards _something._

He was having a strange week, and yet it was full of clarity. How had he lived in this house, survived the fucking apocalypse, and failed to appreciate the fact that his life was about as close to perfect as possible? How was it that he was only realising now how good he had things? To be on good terms with his brother, to have kept Castiel around, to see Bobby on a regular basis? He had a family, a _life,_ and yet never before had he ever taken the time to appreciate just what that meant. Sure, Mom was still dead, Dad was still dead; they’d still seen hundreds of thousands of things that no person should ever have to endure – he’d been to _hell,_ for god’s sake – but despite it all, here he was on a Sunday morning, making bacon and eggs for his little brother in a warm, clean kitchen that was (at least partially) his.

Sam’s voice called him out of his reverie; “What’s up with you this week, anyway? I don’t think I’ve seen you before eight in the morning –“ he paused. “I’ve _never_ seen you awake before eight in the morning.” Another pause. “Not by choice, anyway,” he amended, and Dean scraped the bacon (only slightly burnt) out of the pan, sharing the food equally between them and leaving a little for Castiel, whenever he deigned to show up.

He slid Sam’s food over to him, then tossed him a knife and fork, hearing them clatter across the counter as Sam fumbled the catch. Then he leaned his back against the counter, plate in hand, and hummed around a mouthful of bacon. “I feel good, Sammy. I feel – great, actually.” He realised it as he said it. “Better than I have in years.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Sam looked confused, but pleased. “Where’s Cas?” he asked. Dean looked around, like Cas would spontaneously appear at the sound of his name, like he used to.

“No clue. Did he go out this morning?”

“I didn’t see him,” Sam said, shoving toast in his mouth, and Dean frowned.

“Guess he’s still in bed.” He left the kitchen, and his breakfast, and went up the stairs to where Castiel’s bedroom was. He always felt a little nervous approaching Cas’ room, in part because it was neater than anything Dean had _ever seen_. Its carpets and small wooden dresser were spotless. He’d been joking about him being in bed – Castiel very rarely slept; in fact, Dean didn’t think he’d seen him truly _sleep_ since the day before they averted the apocalypse, curled in the back of the car like a child. Before now, the bed had been mostly for aesthetic purposes; something to do with feng shui, or just that a bedroom looks weird without at least a futon. Dean stopped on the threshold of the room, taking in the place; eyes landing on the dresser, the humble little window, and then, finally, on the lump in the bed which presumably was Castiel.

He stopped for a moment, just watching. The strangeness of it was unbearable, almost uncomfortable; Castiel’s back was to him in a white t-shirt, and for a moment fear rose up and seized his chest in a chokehold. He looked – small, and terrifying, like he’d been deposited there, unwilling. An image of Castiel clutching the covers desperately, of him sitting absently on the starched-white edge of a mattress, hospital-like, shot into his mind and kept him paralytically still – but then Cas rolled over, and his hair was dark and messy on the white pillow, and his eyes were wide, and blue.

“Good morning,” he said, and stretched from head to foot beneath the covers, the movement spiralling out from him, stomach first, a slow uncoil; he put his arms in the air, and yawned, then settled again.

  


“You were sleeping.” Dean entered the room without really thinking about it – went to sit on the edge of the bed. The image of the hospital still lingered in the corner of his mind, but he dismissed it – here was Cas, warm and bundled under the covers, shifting over so that Dean could sit beside him, his hand out of the covers lying just inches from Dean’s own. He looked – _mortal_ but still ethereal, still important somehow, and a giddy little rush of pride went through Dean, knowing that his friend had come so far. “You sleep?”

“I’m trying it out,” Castiel said, voice blurred, and Dean laughed.

“Well, I made breakfast, if you want it.”

Castiel’s hand slid across the sheet, and came to rest on his own. Dean looked at it distantly – Cas’s slim, pale fingers on his own rough, calloused ones. “Thankyou,” he said, and trailed his hand further – touched the base of Dean’s wrist, stroked his hand idly with his thumb.

“You, uh,” he paused, because the sensation of Castiel’s hand on his own – how casually he’d done it – was making his breath come thickly. “You like it so far? Sleeping?”

Castiel nodded, and nosed at the pillow like a cat. “It’s strange. Different. It wasn’t on purpose, before – it felt strange, and wrong, but this –“ his nose was a straight line on the pillow, his eyes fluttering briefly closed. “It’s really quite lovely.” His hand was still on Dean’s, fingers curled around it, just gently. He looked like Dean had never seen him before – it was leaving him speechless, strung out, like Castiel had squeezed every drop of sanity from his body, and replaced it with molasses. His arms didn’t seem to work anymore.

Slowly, like he was finally awakening for real, Castiel shifted and sat up in bed, leaning back against the headboard. He let go of Dean’s hand in the process but trained his eyes on him instead, the ghost of a smile still on his mouth. He looked blank, almost confused, for a second, then said, “Are you speaking at the meeting today?”

Dean nodded; maybe that was why he’d gotten up so early. Lauren, his sponsor and their group leader, had asked him to speak to newer members of the group ‘to show an example.’, and he’d said yes – she was a good friend, had been there for him for a long time, now – but the closer it got to it, the less equipped he felt to be able to tell people how to live. Especially since just a couple of days before, he’d bought a fucking six pack. Castiel watched him, saw his face fall, and reached forward for him again – touched his arm. “You don’t have to do it, if you don’t want to.”

“No. No, I want to,” and, surprisingly, he _did._ He was proud, however infinitesimally. Sam was proud as well, which was the most important thing; Castiel didn’t really seem to mind all that much either way, his friendship and his affection seemingly unconditional, provided that Dean was happy; although Dean remembered a couple of nights, bad ones, where he’d said things to Cas that had made his gaze go stony and cold. He looked at Castiel’s hand on his arm. “You got any plans for today?” he said awkwardly, and then realised something else was in the room with them, more important than his stupid fucking questions. Castiel smiled.

“Do you remember,” he began, not answering what Dean had asked, “Do you remember when we thought the world was ending?“ he trailed off. He didn’t have to say any more; Dean knew what he was getting at. How Castiel had found him in the motel parking lot, alone, the night before, torn and worried and fucking _done_ with everything, seated moody on the steps outside. How Cas had sat next to him, argued with him, gotten angry and then soft and then dead, dead quiet. How he’d reached for Dean in the same moment that Dean reached for him, and kissed him, raggedly clutching at his shirt, at his flesh.

 They hadn’t spoken about it (not soberly, anyway) since it happened – Dean had put it up to desperation, to finding a last hand to hold before they went off the cliff, and had tried not to let it colour their relationship. Now, though, he was wondering why he’d let it go so easily.

“Yeah. I remember.”

“We’ve lived together for three years, now, and never spoken about it.”

Dean swallowed; Castiel’s thumb was drawing circles on his bare arm. “I know.” He said, voice unintentionally hoarse.

“Do you think we’re at the stage where we could?”

Dean raised his eyes to Castiel’s. “Maybe. Yeah.”

Castiel nodded. “Good,” he said, as if that ended the conversation, then let go of Dean’s arm and lay down again. “I’ll be down for breakfast in a while,” he mumbled, closing his eyes, and Dean watched him snooze for a second before he got up and left. When he got downstairs again Sam was still at the kitchen counter, this time reading the newspaper. He raised his eyebrows at Dean’s quietly pleased expression, but said nothing.

\---

His hands were shaking on the drive up.

 He pulled out the collar of his shirt, pacing in the cold, small hallways of the YMCA, hot even though it was bitter autumn cold outside, and the glass on the front window of the car had been frosted over; he’d had to sluice it off with hot water from Castiel’s kettle, and enduring Castiel’s _See, it_ is _useful_ look had almost made him wish he’d left it alone. Still, being able to see the road ahead had been a big plus point, much as it pained him to admit it.

Saying goodbye to Castiel that evening had been pretty weird, too. There was a strange energy between them now, a hesitancy, and though Dean was pretty sure it’d always been there, _noticing_ it was a whole different beast.

He was stressed. He felt too much like a huge shape in the clean, echoing halls. Coming here for AA had been simple enough; there, except to Lauren, he’d been just a face; just another guy with a crappy story, and the story he’d told hadn’t even been his, because no one would believe the facts. He’d found solace there, but it was solace in anonymity, in his brother’s pride. Now, preparing to stand in front of people; to stare them all, point-blank in the face and declare, _I am a success -_ it felt wrong. Felt like a lie.

He looked at the ground, pacing, and tore a hand through his hair. He barely noticed when Lauren came down the hallway and touched his shoulder.

“You alright?” Lauren was a small woman, mousey, if anything; short brown hair, pretty in an unremarkable sort of way. She had laughter-lines, but from what Dean had gleaned over the past five years, she hadn’t laughed all that much until she got sober. She’d been good to him; Dean had resented her at first, but over time they’d become something akin to buddies. When you call someone in the middle of the night to whine about your addiction (and they put up with it), it gets pretty easy to see them as a friend. Plus, with Lauren around, he didn’t have to lean on his brother, and drive him into the ground.

Dean looked at her and grinned weakly. “I’m good.” He was really glad Sam wasn’t here; his little brother seeing him this way would have fucking killed him.

Lauren raised her eyebrows in disbelief, but let it go. “Hey, can I get your USB? For the projector?”

“My what?”

“You know, the little powerpoint you were supposed to do.”

Dean’s heart was in his throat. He pulled at the collar of his shirt even more fervently. “I-“

Lauren cut him off. “Dean, I’m kidding.”

“You’re a fucking asshole,” he breathed out in relief, and Lauren shook her head.

“Dean, just – tell them about it. Tell them about what you went through.” She smiled, and the lines around her eyes grew more pronounced, reminding Dean mildly of Cas. Lauren’s eyes were brown, though. “Believe it or not, Dean, you’re actually something of a marvel.”

Dean snorted derisively, and Lauren shook her head.

“Twenty years addicted, and you’ve been sober for three. Trying for five, which is more than most do. Do you know how few people have that kind of strength?” She shook her head. “Just remember you have a right to be here, okay? These people _want_ to hear you talk.”

“Okay.” He pried his own hand away from his collar, and forced his fingers into a fist at his side, tried to stop himself from shaking. It was dumb, really; seventy years in hell, and he was terrified of a room full of _people_. “I’ll be in in a minute,” he assured Lauren, who nodded, giving his shoulder one final pat before she went down the corridor and ducked into one of the rooms on the left, the one Dean knew so well. He wished, vaguely, that he’d brought notes, or something. Any kind of toehold would be good; but he was lazy, and he’d put it off, thinking – _I lived it. Why would I need to write it down?_

Now, though, he was fucking kicking himself. Maybe a powerpoint wasn’t such a horrible idea.

He drew a deep breath. Then another. Then another, less to calm himself down, more to delay actually making the leap into the room. He’d faced down fucking _Lucifer,_ and come out the other side. He could handle this. He could.

His hand shook minutely. He shoved it into the pocket of his jeans.

He went in.

The silence, he had expected; his boots squeaked on the floor, and he wondered vaguely what asshole had buffed it to within an inch of its life before his eyes alighted on the circle of people watching him enter. Some of them, he knew; others were unfamiliar. All of them looked interested, _normal,_ not broken or sick, not like he’d imagined them before he’d started coming here. Before Sam had convinced him to go, he’d thought to himself, _I can’t be one of them because I’m not a freak. I don’t look like a guy with a problem; I can’t be one of them._ But none of them looked like guys with problems. They were just – people. Men and women, some of them barely thirty years old. Death and sickness and unexplainable sadness, all things in-between. Sometimes Dean’s lot in life seemed overwhelming, but at least he’d never had a son, and lost him. At least he’d never had a wife, and watched her fall away.  Sure, there was Ben and Lisa, but they’d never really been _his._

It was the little silver lining on the fact that before now, he’d never really had a life; he’d never had to let anyone go for good, except his Mom and Dad. The people here were more than familiar with losing their parents.

He got to the centre of the room and lifted his hand awkwardly in greeting. Lauren was in the circle, nodding at him kindly, egging him on. “Hey,” he said, quieter than he’d intended, and a murmur went around in response. “I’m Dean,” this was familiar – hi, I’m Dean, I’m an alcoholic. How many times had he said it, now? Somewhere in the hundreds. Thousands, maybe. He’d chanted it to himself in the car, on the way to meetings, sometimes; anything to make him _go,_ after Sam stopped forcibly driving him there.

“I’m Dean,” he repeated. He grinned at them; they were kindred spirits. They knew how tired those old words were, how easily they came out, now, when in the beginning it’d been like spitting nails. “I’ve been sober for three years,” he said, and some of them looked impressed; others didn’t. “I’ve been coming here for five. Lauren, uh-” he nodded at Lauren, and some of the people in the circle turned to look. “She asked me to come and talk to you guys, because she thinks it’ll help. You, or me, I’m not sure. I’m not exactly a professional or anything, but I’ll tell you guys about me, anyway. If it helps, then, cool. If it doesn’t, I’m sorry for wasting your time,” he smiled weakly, and a ripple of equally weak laughter went through the room. However pathetic, it spurred him onwards, but he faltered as to where to begin.

“I had a drinking problem – I-” he stopped. “I’ve had an unhealthy relationship with alcohol all my life,” he said, remembering the time Lauren told him that, after he talked about his Dad – Daddy drank to cope, and so did Dean. It was almost embarrassing in its simplicity. Still like his dad, after so long.

He was trying to break _that_ habit, too.

He smiled thinly. “So that’s …almost thirty seven years,” he said, more to himself than anyone else, before he remembered his audience. He wanted desperately to sit down, but there was nowhere to go – just an empty space in front of them all, their eyes tracking him as he moved, restlessly, like a tiger pacing the limits of its cage. He didn’t feel much like an animal, though – here, without Sammy, without Cas or Bobby, without a reason to be strong or funny or impressive, he was just – _Dean._ He had almost no idea what that meant.

“I had a bad relationship with my dad,” He said, tired of how often he’d spoken about John in the last five years. “Well-” he laughed, “Hehad a bad relationship with _me._ ” He blew past it, not wanting to linger too long. For once, this would be about _Dean_. “A lot of my life – my adult life, too – I looked in the mirror and I didn’t like what I saw. I had a lot of bad days,” he almost laughed at that, too; what an understatement. “I don’t know if this’ll help any of you guys, because – well, you’re not me. But – what we have in common is that, you know. We’re here,” he said, and found it in him, somehow, to look at them.  “We’re trying.”

After that, it was easy – or as easy as talking about any of it got. They listened, he thought, though it was hard to tell. He wasn’t there for that long but it felt like a lifetime, talking, and when it ended he felt – different. Not like a weight had been removed, but _moved,_ maybe. 

He left, and the drive home was one of cool silence. He turned the radio on – no Zep, which would’ve been perfect, but then – things didn’t happen that way. He smiled to himself instead, as some shitty country singer warbled away.

Alone with himself, he thought back to all the things he’d told them – about Mom, about Dad, about his brother. Embellished though it was – Demons and werewolves and angels removed – it had been the same story, in its bones. For the first time, he felt like it was over. Like he was ready for something else.

Damnit if he didn’t drive home with the stupidest fucking smile on his face.

\---

He found Sam on the couch the next day, after he got home from Bobby’s. He leaned over the back of it, next to his brother’s head. “What’cha watchin’?”

Sam jumped, and turned to look at him as Dean climbed over the back of the couch and flopped down beside him. “Hey. Didn’t see you get in last night,” Sam eyed him carefully, and Dean would never, _ever_ get tired of the edge of suspicion in his brother’s voice when he came home late. _Really._ “Everything go okay?”

“It went …really good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” he said, voice on the edge of disbelief. “No one fell asleep, anyway. It was good.” He paused. “So? What’re you watchin’?”

“You won’t be interested.”

“Not with that attitude.” Dean adjusted himself in his seat, and nudged Sam’s knee with his own. “C’mon. Sell it to me.”

Sam laughed. “It’s about a guy who meets a girl online.”

“So it’s a chick flick?” Dean’s lip curled at the thought, a _Sammy, why,_ on the edge of his tongue.

“It’s a docu _mentary.”_

“Well how was I supposed to know?” Dean muttered, and Sam flapped a hand at him.

“Shut up. It’s about a guy who meets a girl online, but she’s not who she says she is.”

“So she’s a dude?”

Sam shrugged. “Maybe. I dunno yet.”

“Cool.” Dean settled in to watch, and silence reigned until the commercials came on, loud and intrusive. Sam turned the volume down and looked at him.

“So it was good?”

“Yeah.”

“You wanna talk about it?”

Dean raised an eyebrow. “Not… really.”

“Okay.”

They watched a cat food ad in silence. Dean cleared his throat. “Hey, Sammy, if I took Cas for breakfast tomorrow, you think he’d like it?”

Sam looked at him with careful nonchalance _._ “Depends,” he said, and Dean regretted starting the conversation.

“Depends on what?”

“Depends why you’re taking him. Is this a just-friends thing?”

“Of course it fucking is,” Dean bit back.

Sam raised a brow. “Cool. Can I come?”

Dean dropped his head back against the couch, reached over with one arm, and punched him exhaustedly. “You’re a fucking asshole. No, you can’t.”

“So it’s a date.”

“No.”

“Sounds like a date.”

“Well, it’s not. I just want to take the little fucker for breakfast.”

Sam’s grin was ever-present, and Dean wanted desperately to wipe it off his face. Possibly with his feet. “Well, to answer your question,” his tone told Dean he wasn’t going to like the answer, and he looked away, as if that would stop him from hearing it. “Yeah, I think he’d like it. He’s been waiting for you to address this thing you’ve got going on for fucking _years.”_ Before Dean could argue, he went on, “Sometimes I think that wing trick he did when you first met was angel for ‘ _do you want to get coffee’_.” Dean’s mouth flapped uselessly. Sam kept talking. “Does this mean you’ll stop the staring thing?”

“What st- you are such a fucking _dick._ You’re _definitely_ not allowed to come with.”

Sam shrugged, settling himself. He picked up the remote and turned the volume up again. “Don’t wanna come with. You guys are gross.”

Dean lacked the strength to even kick him. He was preparing his comeback when the front door clicked and he jerked upwards, looking incriminatingly uncomfortable as Castiel walked in, glancing only briefly at them as he dropped his keys on the kitchen counter, and started filling the kettle. Sam started silently laughing himself into a coma, which Dean hoped, just a little, he would never emerge from. He hissed at Sam.

“Answer the question. Yes, or no?”

“I can’t believe you’re coming to me for advice.” Dean gave up.

He pressed his hand against Sam’s face as he got up, ignoring the way Sam still snuffled laughter against his palm.  “You _licked my palm._ How old are you?” Sam just laughed - Dean wiped his hand on the couch and slumped into the kitchen, trying to ignore the muffled sounds of Sam’s snorting, which apparently had gotten to the point where he literally could no longer control himself. It wasn’t even that _funny._ Castiel, oblivious, was leaning against the counter when Dean entered; he leaned in the doorway to the kitchen.

“Hey, Cas. Good day?”

Cas eyed him carefully. “What’s wrong with Sam?”

Okay, so, not so oblivious. “Nothing. He’s a _douchebag,”_ he said, voice rising in volume on the last word as he leaned back and half-shouted it at Sam.

“Was it something I did?” Castiel asked him, eyes narrowed, and Dean laughed.

“No, man, you’re fine. He’s just being a dick.” He moved across the room carefully, drawing closer, careful not to stand so close that he made himself uncomfortable. Baby steps. “So, good day?”

Castiel looked ambivalent. He glanced at the kettle, making sure it was sitting straight, then looked at Dean. “It wasn’t entirely discouraging. The Father and I talked about marriage.”

Dean snorted. “And here’s me thinking you guys weren’t even friends.”

“About the _right_ to get married, Dean. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but people get very upset about it. I explained to the father that it was a mostly-outdated practice, and that its original use was primarily in the prevention of incest and the distribution of wealth from generation to generation. He was… less than receptive.”

“Is he receptive to _anything_ you tell him?”

Castiel smirked. “He was much more agreeable once I turned all his wine into water.”

“Isn’t that a little blasphemous?” But he smiled back, impressed. “I didn’t know you could do that.”

Castiel nodded. “It’s not a stretch.” He frowned. “And before you ask, no, I won’t do it the other way around. Your brother would dismember me.”

“Wasn’t gonna ask,” he said, truthfully, although that was a trick he’d be interested to see. Castiel looked him over, considering.

“How was the meeting?”

Dean shrugged. “Good, I guess.”

“Good,”  Castiel nodded. “Sam’s proud of you.”

Dean shifted uncomfortably. “Yeah, well, he could stand to act like it.”

Castiel’s smile was wry, but he said nothing. He was making tea again; at first Dean found it _endless,_ almost frustrating, the way he would make tea with every occasion. When he came in from work, in the mornings, after food (and sometimes _with_ it, too).  Now that he’d gotten used to it, though, he found himself enjoying the way Castiel took to it. With Cas, everything was a ritual; his little movements were precise, learned after the first try, and he never slipped. He wasn’t hesitant, wasn’t vague or nervous or shy. Dean thought, distantly, of his fingers around Dean’s wrist; they were _there._ There was no question in them, only the fact of his presence, the definite, quantifiable pressure of the pads of his hands. Maybe that was why Dean liked him so much; in his life, there weren’t many people who were sure.When Cas kissed him, all those years ago, he’d never felt anything so sure.

Speaking of which, though, this wasn’t a time for himto be hesitant, either. Better to make enduring Sam’s laughter actually worth something.

“So are you going to see him again tomorrow?”

Castiel frowned, stirring his tea. He pressed the bag against the side of the cup, then carried on stirring. “I don’t think so. I should probably give him some time to rest.”

“Time for _you_ to rest as well?” he grinned. “You were pretty excited about sleeping yesterday morning. And I didn’t see you around for breakfast today.”

“A fortunate side-effect.” Castiel held the tea under his nose, both hands wrapped around the cup. It was cold outside; that half-autumn chill was starting to settle, wrapping its gentle fingers around the trees. “I slept in this morning. I thought it was better to make the Father wait for me, as opposed to the other way around.”

Dean grinned, at that. “So you’re not busy tomorrow?”

“Not as far as I’m aware.”

“You wanna get breakfast?” It came out half-slurred, a blurry mess so vague he barely knew if he’d said the words or just made a noise in Castiel’s general direction. Castiel, thankfully, seemed to pick it up.

“With you and Sam?”

“With me.”

“Alright,” he said; again, no hesitation, no pattering around the subject. A simple, solid _yes._ Dean nodded.

“Cool,” he turned to leave the kitchen, embarrassed. He looked back. “Me and Sam are watching some weird documentary, if you wanna join us.”

“I think I’ll just go to bed.”

“Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Dean stopped, just to take him in. Castiel, strong, sure; not Cas who’d called himself a poor example, not the image Dean had imagined, had gone back to; the vision of the future Zachariah had shown him, wrecked and weary and pained. Embarrassment seized him again. Castiel’s gaze hadn’t left his own for a long, long moment, and he was smiling in that knowing way of his, making Dean’s heart plummet into his boots.

 “Yeah,” he muttered, hasty, and all but ran away. He went back over to where Sam was still sitting, and smacked him in the back of the head. “Shut your mouth,” he muttered as he sat beside him, and Sam touched a hand to where he’d been hit.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“You were gonna.”

 


	2. Chapter 2

Dean woke in a cold sweat.

He shook his head; the sheets around him were soaked through, clinging to him. He sat up, breathing hard, hair plastered to his forehead and his eyes staring sightlessly between his knees, bile rising in his throat.

He couldn’t remember the dream, but – he stopped that train of thought in its tracks. Sometimes, he had learned, it was best just not to think about it.

He dredged himself out of bed, flipping the sheets back as he went. It was four, maybe five in the morning – the house was cold and silent. He passed Sam’s room and the light was off, the door closed but for a crack, through which Dean could see his little brother’s great, long body prone in sleep. Sam huffed and curled over and something – part of the dream that lingered, maybe – relaxed in his gut, went soft again.

He lingered in the doorway, watching, until he felt like a fucking creep and moved on to the bathroom.

In the bathroom he felt a little better after pissing, grounding himself in something mundane. He stood washing his hands, watching out the window as the cold autumn sun started, just barely, to rise on the horizon. It wasn’t late enough in the year for the days to start getting shorter, but the season was behaving already like it held its breath – leaves poised, rattling; the few wild things that’d grown in their garden over the summer starting, slowly, to wither away.

He dried his hands and made as if to go back to his bedroom, then gave up; there was no chance he’d sleep after this, too many years of being woken by danger and using the adrenaline to sustain an entire day. 

He tiptoed downstairs; went into the kitchen and pattered around quietly, trying to find something to do that wouldn’t wake Cas and his brother, peaceful upstairs. He felt too big to be wandering around, feet heavy, making too much noise.

Defeated, he picked up one of the paperbacks Sam had bought him – _Cathedral,_ by Raymond Carver, which admittedly was a pretty good choice – and pulled his jacket from where it hung on the stairs, shrugging it over his shoulders as he left the house for the porch.

He read a little, but mostly he sat with the book between his thumbs on the front porch, watching the morning rise and wax to fullness. Its white, cold light filled everything with such gradual pace that he barely would have noticed it, had he not been watching.

The book itself went unfinished, short though it was; he waited until the grumbling of his stomach got unbearable and even then he was hard pressed to leave, to stop lingering in the half-light as people he didn’t know passed the front of the house, all with things to do. What moved him was that concept, to an extent – he had his _own_ people to see. He smiled, thinking of Cas; he had breakfast to get, this morning.

He went back inside and shut the door quietly behind him, and jumped when Sam said his name.

“Whoa. Morning,” he grinned, embarrassed, and Sam eyed him strangely, hooking up his headphones to his ears as he prepared to go outside. Sam, caught off-guard just as much as Dean, was clearly trying not to look as if he’d just been doing calf-stretching exercises.

“You’re up early,” Sam said, dubious, and Dean held up the book.

“Couldn’t sleep. This is good,” he said, flapping it, and Sam smiled gently, though his expression was still laced with worry.

“Glad you like it. I’m gonna-” he gestured at the door and Dean, awkwardly, moved further into the house so that Sam could leave.

“Yeah,” he replied pointlessly, then coughed just as Sam was opening the front door. “Cas up, yet?”

Sam grinned at him; Dean wished immediately that he hadn’t asked. “Think so.” Thank heaven for small miracles; he said nothing else. Just smiled as he left the house, and Dean picked up an orange from the fruit bowl - _fruit bowl,_ he thought derisively; _what had they become? -_ and debated throwing it at the door after him.

He decided it would be more effort than necessary; especially when Castiel came downstairs and caught him weighing it in his hand.

“I thought we were going out for breakfast,” he asked, blithe, and Dean guiltily put the orange down.

“Yeah,” he grinned helplessly, and his embarrassment forced it to fade. “Yeah, just let me get my jeans on.”

\---

It was little awkward. Not as much as he had feared; Castiel had plenty to say, not as quiet as he used to be, and he’d grown much more into just talking-for-talking’s-sake in recent years. When they’d met his words had been mostly functional, but for the small moments when he let himself go. He being so much chattier now was a nice change.

Still, there was a weight that hung between them, over the table; Dean drummed his fingers on it, then stopped, not wanting Castiel to think he was bored – Cas seemed content to sit looking out the window at the park that lay past the diner, occasionally turning to Dean with an observation, or a question. It was Dean who was feeling strange, wondering if the waitress’ smile was edged with knowing mockery, if the people around them were looking on in disgust. Eventually, Castiel nudged him with a foot.

“You’re not enjoying yourself,” he said, looking more disappointed than had Dean anticipated, and he held up his hands quickly, shaking his head.

“No, no. No, I’m fine, I’m sorry. I-” he glanced around without meaning to, and Cas’ expression relaxed.

“Have you finished eating?” he said, nudging him again under the table, and Dean looked down at his plate.

“Yeah. Pretty much.”

“Do you want to walk home?” Castiel asked him, as if speaking to a horse that might spook. Dean laughed gratefully.

“I could pick up the car later,” he said, instead of _yes please;_ but judging by his smile, Cas understood.

He threw down money – he wasn’t _paying for breakfast,_ that wasn’t what this was, it was just that Cas had only ordered a tea and it seemed petty to ask him to pay, that was all – and they left together, Dean with his hands in his pockets, Castiel close beside him.

They walked out onto the park and even on a weekday morning like this it was bustling, full of mothers with their children, of dads picking up their kids and swinging them around, lifting them to hoist them onto the monkey-bars, or running after to save them from tripping.

“D’you think Sam will ever settle down?” he asked Castiel absently as they passed, turning away from the brightly-coloured metal frames of the park, from the children yelling and whooping and wailing, and their exasperated parents.

Castiel was walking so close that their arms were touching; they were in step with one another, and as they followed the path along, Castiel waited until they were out of sight of the park before he placed his hand on the base of Dean’s wrist again, as he had before; sure and unrepentant, with a deliberateness that suggested he thought nothing of it. As if they _always_ touched this way. If Dean reacted, he did so only minutely; turned to face him briefly, then walked on. “I expect he will, eventually. He settled down with Jessica well enough,” Castiel said, a touch of reverence at Jess’ name; Dean didn’t ask how he knew who she was, or how he knew how to talk about her. He preferred to ignore that aspect of Sam’s life, Sam’s _loss,_ mostly because it was one of the things he blamed himself for, in darker moments. “What about you?” Castiel asked, catching him off guard. His hold on Dean’s arm went unchanged.

“Me?”

“Settling down, I mean.”

Dean looked at him hesitantly.“I dunno,” he said, instead, then felt really fucking stupid about it, though Castiel’s face didn’t fall. He couldn’t backtrack, so instead he wormed his arm out of Castiel’s grip and pulled Castiel’s hand into his pocket alongside his own, so his cold fingers lay against the back of his hand.

They walked home  through what the town council optimistically called a ‘woods’, but which was actually more like a copse of half-grown trees, planted only recently. Castiel’s hand stayed in his pocket; not holding on but not leaving, either, and Dean spent most of his time talking to him trying to work up the courage in his own head to turn his damned hand around and thread his fingers with Castiel’s own. Wondering, too, if there was a way to do it without being a fucking cheeseball about it.

Under the thicket of trees the low, cold midday light barely dimmed, but something took hold of him, still – made him think of the dream he didn’t really remember. He looked at Cas to ground him. Told himself, _this is what’s real. This;_ and finally took Castiel’s hand in his own, squeezing perhaps a little too hard.

Mid-sentence, Castiel stopped, and looked at him. “Are you okay?” he asked, and Dean nodded.

“Yeah. Fine,” and he was – he was used to flashbacks, hadn’t had any in a while, and didn’t know what this was flashing back _to,_ exactly, but this was just – a bad moment in a succession of what had pretty much consistently been good ones, and he swallowed the fear and anxiety trying to crawl its way up his neck. “Just remembered something. That’s all.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” he assured him, relaxing his grip on his hand. At least it had helped _something;_ for the rest of the walk home Castiel’s fingers remained tangled with his, warm in his pocket, the angle of their arms laughably awkward. By the time they got home, Dean wishing he’d put in a little more effort and bought Castiel more than _tea,_ which he could get for free in the house – for god’s sake - his wrist was aching, bent uncomfortably in a pocket which wasn’t exactly designed to hold two. Castiel slipped away as they got to the door.

“You shouldn’t really have walked back,” Dean realised, fumbling with his keys, hand going cold where Castiel had left it. “Could’ve just zapped in,”  which was a stupid thing to say, really, and implied that he’d missed the point of the whole thing, when really he hadn’t – Castiel’s gently patronising expression said the same.

“I wasn’t doing it for convenience.”

Dean got the door open but lingered. If Cas crossed the threshold now, without him, it was like everything would just go back to normal, and he didn’t know if he wanted it. The warmth of Castiel’s hand was still in his pocket; Cas was looking at him, patient. “I’ve gotta go to Bobby’s,” he blurted, and Castiel’s face, finally, fell. Dean had been waiting; there it was.

“Oh,” he said softly, neither openly disappointed nor sounding entirely pleased about it. Dean pushed the door open because he could think of little else to do.

“This was fun, Cas,” Dean told him, voice quieter than he’d intended, and Cas nodded.

“It was.”

“We should-” Christ. He was fucking everything up. He couldn’t stop.

“Definitely,” but his voice was hollow. Castiel put one foot on the front step; made as if to go into the house. He picked up Sam’s car keys from the table beside the front door and tossed them lightly to Dean. “You’ll have to borrow Sam’s. Your car’s still in town.”

“Yeah. Yeah, I’ll get it later,” he said absently. Castiel turned to leave him, and almost got the door all the way shut before Dean caught his sleeve. Cas turned back. “It was nice,” Dean said quietly, and Castiel’s expression softened – whether out of sympathy or pity, Dean didn’t know.

Castiel pulled gently out of his grasp. “You should go. Bobby will be waiting.”

“Yeah. I know.” He stayed a moment more. “You okay?”

“Of course.” Castiel smiled encouragingly at him, and Dean nodded.

“I’ll see you later.” He dropped his hold on Castiel’s shirt; Cas nodded in response.

“Goodbye, Dean,” he said softly, the smile still tugging at his lips, and Dean grinned.

“Doin’ better.” Castiel’s smile widened. “You’ll get the hang of it, one of these days.”

He turned to go, jostling the keys in his hand, and heard Castiel’s soft, muttered, “Maybe,” as the door closed behind him.

That was – that was what it was, he thought, as he pulled out of the driveway, looking in the window to check he wasn’t going to run anyone down. That was _something._

\---

Bobby was on the phone when he opened the door. He looked surprised to see him. “You workin’ today?” he asked, and Dean nodded as he pushed past Bobby to get inside. He waited awkwardly at the kitchen table as Bobby finished up his call. When he returned, Dean was scratching his name into the table with a knife Bobby had left out; the older hunter looked disapprovingly at him, but said nothing.

“Well, you’ll be pleased,” he said gruffly, shuffling into the kitchen and opening the fridge to get himself a beer. “There’s a hunt for you.” Dean turned immediately to look at him. There was a pause – Bobby cracked the bottlecap off by smacking it on the counter, a skill Dean had yet to truly master, and which he guessed he’d never really learn, now, unless he developed an addiction to glass bottles of coke. “If you want it,” Bobby finished, his gaze measuring. Dean raised his eyebrows.

“Why wouldn’t I want it?”

Bobby frowned. “No reason.” He took a swig of his drink. “You want a glass of water, or something?” Maybe it was a little unnecessary to drink in front of him, but Dean wasn’t all that bothered by it. He knew, distantly, that some part of Bobby was proud, and that it wasn’t vindictive or uncaring; Bobby was just set in his ways, and Dean wouldn’t change him even if he had the ability – and he doubted even the legions of angels in heaven were powerful enough to sway him from his habits.

“No, I’m good. What’s the hunt?”

“Pack of werewolves up in Kansas. You up to it?”

Dean looked at him incredulously. “Of course I fucking am, Bobby, that’s not even a high-profile hunt,” he paused. “Have you been holding out on me?”

Bobby averted his eyes a little, gazing at his beer instead. It was enough.

“You _have?”_

“Boy, don’t get the wrong idea,” he said. Dean waited.

“So, what? You think I’m gettin’ too old for the game? You think I can’t handle it anymore?”

Bobby reached over and smacked him in the side of the head. “Are you a goddamned fool? Of course I don’t think you ‘can’t handle it’. _Jesus,”_ he blinked, as if Dean had said something so stupid he had no idea how to quantify it. “I was lettin’ you _rest,_ you fuckin’ idjit. You’re playin’ house with Cas, and Sam’s gone back to school – I didn’t wanna bother you.” His mouth turned downwards, eyes on Dean’s. “I thought you were happy.”

“I _am,_ but it’s in my blood _,_ you know?”

Bobby’s frown deepened. “See, that’s just it, ain’t it? You think it’s a part of you. How much did you miss it, Dean? Tell me the truth. You haven’t been on a hunt in near six months – nothin’ major, anyway. How’d you feel?”

“I- Bobby, that’s not fair.”

“Neither is you riskin’ your life for no reason. S’not fair on your brother, or on Cas, _or_ on me.” Bobby sniffed haughtily, gesturing with the bottle. “Not to mention on your own self. Did you get sober for nothin’, boy?”

“Bobby it’s just a hunt. It’s small fry. I can do it. I _want_ to do it.”

Bobby sighed and took another pull on his beer, then looked at him, hard. “You wanna do it, you can do it. But you’ll understand if maybe you’re not my first call anymore,” his expression softened, with the reluctance that it always had; Bobby didn’t like getting touchy-feely any more than Dean did, although he’d been alright at it when they were kids (better than his dad, anyway).  “You’re happy, Dean,” he said, earnest, words pushing at his voice. “Don’t fuck it up.”

Dean rose from his seat. “I’m gonna go out to the yard,” he said. There was a job waiting out there for him and it was a mess, but Dean thought he could put it to rights, given the time. He said to Bobby, as he left; “I get it, Bobby, I do, but you don’t have to coddle me, alright? I’m good. Like you said. I’ll take the job.”

“Fine.” Bobby grunted. “But don’t take your brother. He never liked it in the first place, and if he fails his classes ‘cause a’ you, there’ll be hell to pay.”

“Fine,” Dean replied, grudgingly. “Whatever.” He stomped out to the yard, already looking forward to the hunt just that little bit less, knowing Sam wouldn’t be by his side – he’d take Cas, of course, but it was never the same. He missed it, distantly, sometimes, though Bobby was probably right in saying it was for the best.

Outside, he felt more at peace. The metal was cool under his hands, the day slipping away. There, there was no time for considering Bobby’s worries, or the way he’d left things with Cas, or whether he and his brother would ever hunt together again. There was the job, the metal, the logic, and he enveloped himself in it fully.

\---

Sam looked a little relieved when Dean said he wasn’t expected (or _allowed,_ he thought resentfully; _thanks, Bobby)_ to come with. Dean wasn’t really surprised; he knew all along that this whole gig never suited Sam, not even when he was a kid and his dad was buying them milkshakes as a reward for shooting well. Sammy had said to him early on; maybe six, seven years old; _I’m not gonna do this forever, Dean._ Dean hadn’t believed him at the time, but as they pulled out of the driveway – Cas tapping away at his smartphone, a purchase Dean regretted already (not because of the money; mostly it was the fact that Cas kept beating his Candy Crush score) – he watched Sam wave, and wave a little more – and then go back inside the house with his books and his laptop, probably glad for a weekend alone.

It was so easyto forget that his brother was over thirty now, was getting his frigging law degree, _finally,_ and probably didn’t want to hunt ever again, if only for fear that it would suck them in once more - become Dean again, body and soul, so all that filled him was rage and anger and twisted _justice_. Yeah, he loved the job. He hadn’t lied to Bobby when he’d said it was in his blood - but he was realising, slowly, that maybe it wasn’t worth dragging Sammy along if it meant taking him away from his life.

After thirty minutes on the road, Cas was obviously getting bored.

The guy – and it was ridiculous to Dean, considering how long he’d been alive – was impatient as _fuck._ He could apparently wait a good 15,000 years for civilization to build itself, perched on a fucking cloud or whatever, but give him half an hour in a car on a long, featureless road and he got antsy so quick that he basically turned into a five-year-old.

Sure enough, after they’d driven a good twenty miles, he started shuffling in his seat. He looked up from the smartphone, then dropped it callously into the glovebox, and turned to Dean, instead. “Is there a service station close by?” he said, innocuously enough, but Dean had been on a couple of drives with Cas, and he knew what it meant.

“We’re not stopping, Cas.”

Cas frowned. “Why not?”

“You only wanna stop so you can wander around for an hour. Wait until the human needs to pee.”

Castiel pulled a face. He shuffled down in his seat, so half his butt was off the chair, his feet and legs bunched up in the space below the glovebox. He sighed. Dramatically. Wearily. “These long journeys are so _tiresome_ ,” he said, and smudged his hand across his face. Dean snorted, and turned the radio on.

“Wanna listen to one of those-” Radio-vangelists? Televangelists? “- Religious guys on the radio?”

Castiel turned to look at him, arms folded, and his expression was similar to how Dean imagined he’d look if someone waved dog poop underneath his nose. “Why would I want _that?”_

Dean shrugged, eyes on the road. “Give you something to do,” he said, but he was grinning, and Castiel huffed, half-amused.

“Can we listen to music instead?” he said, after a moment’s quiet. Dean looked at him.

“ _My_ music?”

Castiel shrugged, the movement making the car seat squeak against his sweater. “If there’s nothing else.”

Dean wasn’t going to argue with that; he took one hand off the wheel and gestured at the glovebox. “Pick something,” he said, driving with one hand. Then he paused. “ _Not_ Bon jovi.”

Castiel put the tape he’d picked back. “What, then?” he asked. Dean shrugged.

“Whatever. You choose.”

Castiel chose at random – _Houses of the Holy,_ not Dean’s favourite Zep album, but it’d do; Castiel frowned deeply at ‘ _Dy’er Mak’er_ ’; perked up at ‘ _The Rain Song’_ (he _would_ ) and seemed content to let the rest of it wash over him, quiet. Silent car rides, however, were not Dean’s thing; he’d lived through way too many, been forced to, and here in the car he always felt a little more at home, a little brighter. The half-failure of his breakfast with Cas still weighed on his mind.

“Get _Foreigner,”_ he said, gesturing at the glovebox again. Castiel looked at him oddly, but dug around for it as Dean popped the tape out of the deck and threw it ( _carefully)_ back where it came from.

Castiel emerged from the overfull glovebox with the tape between his thumb and forefinger; Dean plucked it from him, and stuck it into the tape deck. Last time he’d played it, he hadn’t rewound; he pressed the button and listened to the familiar whirr of the deck, the sound of all the miles of music-saturated brown plastic inside the tape going back and back and back. He shushed Cas – Cas frowned irritably – and then pressed play. Not quite at the beginning, but it didn’t matter; he let it go, easier to sing along with than Robert Plant’s edgy warble; this was music that could fill a car, that would make Sam roll his eyes and lunge to change it to radio, if Dean didn’t slap his hand away fast enough.

Dean grinned; slapped his palms on the wheel in time, then glanced at Cas. Cas was pulling himself out of his slump; shuffling up to sit properly and quirk an eyebrow at him; he said nothing, but he smiled, and when Dean started singing - he wasn’t the greatest and he knew it, but he thought he made up for it with enthusiasm -  he was surprised to hear a quiet hum in the background, below it. He turned the radio down and looked at Cas.

“Are you singing?” he asked, a little bewildered, and Cas looked him in the eyes without a trace of bashfulness. “It seemed like you were enjoying yourself,” he said, then said no more about it; just smiled in his frustratingly secretive way and sang along with the chorus to ‘ _Hot Blooded’,_ and made Dean laugh when his voice broke around ‘check it and _see’._

By the end of the journey Dean had almost pulled off the road three times; once because Cas saw a service station and wouldn’t stop pestering him; once because Castiel’s nonplussed face at the lyrics to _The Lemon Song_ made him spit his service station coffee all over the dash; and once because, in arguing about directions, Castiel said ‘ _Dean I will make you turn this car around’_ and he started laughing again.

They pulled up at a motel about halfway; night had pressed itself around the car, and Dean had hardly seen it coming; one moment they were talking about lunch, the next Castiel was slumped against the car door, his cheek squashed against the window, breathing condensation onto its cold pane. Even Dean himself was blinking, hard, to stave off sleep. It was late; he got out of the car to check at the desk for vacancies, not wanting to wake Cas for no reason. He came back to the car, much more nervous than how he’d felt when he left.

Carefully he got back into the driver’s seat, and nudged Castiel’s shoulder until he was awake. “No-go, Cas,” he said, making his decision there and then. “Only doubles left.”

Cas bleary, lifted his head. “I don’t mind.” He yawned; then he lifted his hand blindly to find the car door handle, pulled it, and got out. Dean got out and followed him, locking the door as he went.

“Cas,” They fell into step with one another; Castiel looked at him levelly.

“ _Dean,”_ he replied; and with such gravity to his tone that Dean knew it wasn’t wise to argue. He sounded almost disappointed in him. “You trust me,” he said, and Dean blinked.

“I’m not worried about you _doing something,_ man, I just-” he swallowed. It was the _thought._ The _action_ of the double room, the gravity it carried. The line it crossed for _him,_ not for them both. He walked double time to keep up with Castiel. Cas cleared his throat.

“Besides, you’re too tired to drive. It’s dangerous. I’d rather you uncomfortable than dead.” He turned to look at Dean a final time, and Dean shoved his hands into his pockets – partly because it was cold outside, partly for something to distract him from Castiel’s gaze, which still managed to be penetrating, even half-lidded and edged in sleep.

“Okay,” he shrugged, “If you don’t mind.”

“I don’t mind,” Castiel assured him, and went in the other direction, to the front desk. Dean was relieved not to have the duty himself; he wasn’t sure he could have done it without his voice going strange and high. He watched from outside the lobby as Castiel talked to the woman at the front desk, got the key, and came back outside without so much as a ruffled feather.

“98,” he said, and went ahead across the dark parking lot, the floor cut up in shadows. Dean – bewildered, nervous as hell – followed behind, followed him into the room when he opened it, and nodded carefully when Castiel said, casually, “I’ll get our things.”

The door closed behind him. Dean sat on the bed.

He would have been much more capable of telling himself it wasn’t a big deal if he had any idea in the fucking universe what Castiel _meant_ by it. With an elbow on each knee, foot twitching with nerves, he thought, _are we going to have sex?,_ and flushed involuntarily. He sat there for a long moment with his hand in his own hair, his knee bouncing up and down, tense.

Eventually, he pushed himself up by force – he went into the bathroom and took a shower, at a loss for anything else that would fill the five minutes Castiel was gone.

When he came out again – towelling his hair dry, his clothes from the day layered over damp skin – there was a neat pile of his clothes at the foot of the door – a loose pair of pants, a t-shirt. _Socks;_ which, for some reason, was the thing that made him stop in his tracks the most.

Across the room in the offending double slept Castiel, lying on his side, firmly on the right. Dean looked at him and his expression softened.

Not that, then. Not anything.

He took the clothes – shrank back into the bathroom to change into them, then came out, crossed the room, and slid under the covers without even thinking about it. Castiel, shaken half-awake again, blinked at him. He said, “Ssh.” His arms were wrapped around his pillow, his face dug into it. His eyes slipped closed almost as quickly as he’d opened them.

Dean lay looking at him for a second, a strange tension in him. Castiel, asleep beside him, felt like nothing. No milestone, no great border crossing, no change, like he’d thought; just a furl of surprisingly warm angel on the other side of the bed, mumbling as grumpily in his sleep as he had in the car.

Dean shuffled down under the sheets and lay back, looking at the ceiling, the distance between them  wide enough that he barely even knew Cas was there. He watched the lights of passing cars move on the ceiling in orange stripes and then, effortlessly, he fell asleep.

\---

In the morning he woke having hardly moved; he opened his eyes, blinked groggily. Something small and warm was on his chest, and for a weird, _blinding_ moment he assumed it was Lisa Braeden, the one with the great kid, who Dean hadn’t seen in fucking _years;_ not since before he went to hell _._ He blinked awake, realised how stupid that thought was, and in the same moment realised the warmth was Castiel’s hand.

It was his palm, just that; his arm across the space between them, his palm on Dean’s chest. Dean turned to look at him and he was still asleep; he must have woken at some point, must have reached out, but Dean hadn’t noticed, if he had.

He blinked, still unnerved and fascinated by how easily Castiel slipped into some approximation of humanity. Easier, sometimes, than Dean himself managed it; Castiel was an all-powerful angel, and yet managed to lie asleep with his nose turned against the sheets, his hand with his fingers splayed across Dean’s shirt, and make it look completely natural. 

He thought he should wake him, maybe; tell him something about how strange this moment was, how wide, how liquid; wake him and say, _your hand is warm_ (it was)or something dumb, like that, but instead he just lifted his own hand from where it was curled over his own stomach, and placed it, tentatively, lightly, over Castiel’s.

Cas murmured, “Not yet,” quietly, and for a moment Dean thought he meant the hand; but Castiel shook his head against the sheets. “Another hour,” he mumbled, voice slurred, and Dean would have laughed, if it wouldn’t wake him.

“Not yet?” he asked, quietly. Castiel shook his head, again; opened his eyes just a crack.

“Not yet.” Cas repeated, and under Dean’s hand he curled his own into a loose fist, his knuckles pressing, as if knocking, over Dean’s ribs; over his heart. 


	3. Chapter 3

They packed up in the widening light, Dean with his bag slung under his arm, Castiel clutching the handles of his own, swinging it gently beside him as they walked to the car. Castiel seemed content not to discuss. Sometimes Dean thought he liked him purely for his straight-talking; _no, Dean; yes, Dean; Dean, that’s a stupid idea_. Interaction with Cas (half-accomplished breakfast trips aside) was often the simplest Dean had ever had with another person. No fuss, no tricks, no ulterior motive. It was a breath of fresh air, considering all the double-talkers Dean had been around, even in his relatively nomadic life.

They pulled up to the house of their first ‘witness’ – Alyssa, a small, dark-skinned woman, short and round, who smiled tentatively as she opened the door. Her husband had gone missing recently, around the time the deaths started happening – he could just have been an unfortunate victim, but Dean, with a twinge of sympathy for this woman, suspected that wasn’t the case.

She stood inside the house – behind her, the lights were off – as Castiel and Dean looked down at her.

“You’re here about Stuart?” she asked. Dean nodded – dug in his jacket pocket for his badge, muttering their aliases – “We spoke on the phone,” - but she barely even glanced at it before she waved them both inside.    

The house was small, as houses went; she and Stuart clearly lived alone. Dean and Castiel traipsed, too big, through the hallway, with its navy-blue walls; over a sitting-room, where pictures of this woman and her husband and their friends hung – a plethora of them, all in slim metal frames. The place was comfortably, accurately arranged; a place where people with a lot of time on their hands had thought long and hard about how they wanted their home to look.

           

Castiel stopped, briefly fascinated by a picture of Alyssa and her husband, a small, thin child hoisted on her husband’s hip, and half a dozen others clustered around them, grinning at the camera. He picked it up with both hands. He looked at her. “Is this you and your husband?”

She nodded. “We met doing charity work,” she shrugged, self-conscious, one hand encircling the other wrist. “Twee, I know, but there it is. Do you want to sit in the kitchen?”

Dean cleared his throat – gestured for Cas to put the picture down. He did. “That’ll be fine. We just want to ask you a couple of questions.”

She led the way through to the kitchen – it was tiny, too; low ceilings and a wooden fan that buzzed overhead, wooden counter-tops and trinkets littered around; a fat, waxy, wooden figure of the Buddha on the windowsill, his arm raised, his mouth open in laughter. Dean looked away from it – followed Alyssa as she settled herself at the kitchen table. Cas, obviously distracted, joined them after a moment’s pause. The whole place, like Alyssa herself, was tiny, though not cramped; it was warm and clean, and smelt like coffee and the incense Alyssa was burning on the window-frame. Dean looked at it absently, and Alyssa caught his eye. She curled her hands together on the table.

“His stuff. Smells like shit.” She laughed gently. “Thought maybe he’d smell it, and come home,” she shrugged. “It’s stupid. I’m sorry,” she paused, and looked up – at Cas, first, then at Dean. “What did you want to ask me?”

Dean looked at her for a moment, and swallowed. “We just wanted to know if your husband does this a lot,” he said, looking her in the eye. She shrugged tiredly – she smiled a lot, this woman, but it didn’t quite reach her eyes; it seemed strained, an effort to produce. There were dark circles around her eyes that Dean knew all too well, and her voice was thick when she spoke.

“Disappear, you mean?” Dean nodded in response. She looked down at her hands. “Sometimes. Not often, not really; he always comes back. He’s never been away for this long before.” She looked back up at them – at Cas, imploring. “Do you have any clue where he is?”

“None,” Cas replied. Truthfully, too. “We were wondering if you knew where he might be.”

She looked blank. “If I knew, I’d be there with him,” she said. In the silence that followed, Castiel looked out of the window; there were wind-chimes in the garden, and if Dean could have guessed, he’d have said those were Stuart’s, too. “Is it true? That after 48 hours-” she stopped.

Dean shook his head. “We’ll find him, if he’s out there,” he assured her, hating the lie beneath his words. If this guy was out there, killing people, Dean would take him out; it was as simple as that, philanthropist or not. He shot a hesitant glance at Castiel – he was looking around the room, eyeing everything in there; the wooden counter-tops, the ornaments. His eyes alighted on Alyssa’s neck, where a thin, silver chain dropped over her collarbones, a tiny ‘eternity’ symbol dangling from the end. He pointed at it.

“Was that from your husband?” he asked, and Alyssa looked down, surprised. She picked it up in thumb and forefinger.

“No,” she said. “It was my mom’s. Stuart hates it, actually. Asks me to take it off whenever he sees it hanging around.” She twirled the tiny pendant, considering. “Guess I’m a little pissed at him for going missing.” She grinned, laughing absently, her eyes on the necklace in her hand. “Gotta punish him somehow,” but her voice was faraway. She dropped the chain. “Do you really think you can find him?” she asked, hope creeping into her voice.

Dean coughed; Castiel folded his hands together on the table and looked at her seriously. “If we can bring him back to you, we will,” he said. She nodded, her lips twisting anxiously.

“Okay.”

Dean pushed himself out of his chair. “If you need us, here’s where you can reach us.” He handed her a scrap of paper with his phone number on it, and she took it wordlessly as she stood, too; held it limply at her side. They walked back to the door, Alyssa trailing behind, her slipper-covered feet making slow sshing noises on the carpets and floors as they went. Dean left the house immediately with a curt goodbye, but Cas – Cas stayed on the doorstep for a moment, and touched her shoulder, and looked down, into her eyes.

“I’m truly sorry for what’s happened,” Dean heard him say, and he watched as Castiel squeezed her shoulder; as he reached for her hand, and shook it. “I promise you’ll be okay,” he said, and Alyssa looked unnerved under his gaze.

He released her hand – turned on his heel, to follow Dean to the car. When they got in, Dean said nothing as Castiel snapped his seatbelt on. He started the car, and when he looked into the wing mirror he saw that Alyssa was still stood in the doorway looking after them, her hand lifted in a confused, empty half-wave.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he said, as he pulled away from the curb, and Castiel made a noise of displeasure.

“Her husband is the wolf.”

Dean nodded. “Yeah, I know. The disappearing, the necklace. Probably been one since they met.”

Castiel looked out the window; raised a hand to touch the glass. “It’s not fair on her,” he said bleakly, and Dean nodded again.

“’Course not. Bastard probably doesn’t know what he’s got there. Break her freakin’ heart if she knew.”

“When we find him, will we tell her what he is?”

Dean looked away from the road to glance at him. “What, that she’s been sharing her bed with a murderer all this time? No, Cas. She’s better off thinking he just died.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah,” Dean assured him, but the question made him doubt himself. “Better to spare her the life,” he said, a little more confidently, and Castiel didn’t argue any further.

\---

 

They went back to the motel, each with shoulders hanging heavy. Dean slid into a seat at the low fold-up table, and opened Sam’s spare laptop, lent to them _just this once_. Castiel seated himself opposite, legs folded beneath him, and watched Dean carefully over its brim.

At the morgue, the evidence had been pretty clear; a child, its heart removed from its chest. The most recent victim of a slew of others, happening sporadically over the past year, increasing in frequency as time wore on. Dean assumed Stuart was one of the guys who was good at hiding his problem. It was your standard story; a lot of creatures who started off human were good at controlling themselves, at first; but there was a point where that self-control reached its end, and all of them reached it eventually. Stuart was just another in a long line.

Dean sighed, and shut the lid of the laptop. Googling stuff wasn’t really getting them anywhere. “So they found the body out in the woods,” he said.

Castiel nodded. “That seems as good a place as any to start.”

They went out hours later, having spent their time at the motel, waiting for nightfall; Castiel idly browsed the internet, occasionally asking for Dean’s input on something weird he’d found; Dean cleaned and re-cleaned his guns, worried their disuse would take its toll. By the time they pulled up to the road alongside the forest where the body had been found, Dean was antsy, hands twitching for the handgun in his pocket even as he stepped from the car.

The good thing about werewolves was that they left confident trails; they had none of the conniving mystery of other creatures; little malice, little planning. All that werewolves were was hungry, and hunger isn’t the best at covering its tracks.

The two of them followed a wavering path of eviscerated animal carcasses, their organs strewn across the forest floor. Buried in the dark heart of the woods was a small, musty cabin, its door swinging wide and loose on its hinges. Across from it, Dean turned to Castiel.

“Think we’ve found the place,” he said mildly, and the reluctance inside him surprised him more than anything else. The woods made him uneasy, a product of the dreams, he thought, and standing poised on the edge of the clearing, he almost didn’t want to go in. Something in him was trembling; maybe it was being distanced from the game, maybe it was because this particular werewolf had killed a child – but he didn’t want to go into the cabin, even though he knew he had to. Castiel, at his side, touched his arm briefly, and Dean awoke from his stupor. He blinked, and started moving forward, hand tight on the pistol at his hip. “C’mon.”

The two of them approached, slow and careful; the cabin was weather-worn, but it wasn’t clear whether it belonged to Stuart himself, whether it was abandoned, or if the werewolf had killed its former occupants; either way, the thing was a mess. Claw-marks lined the inner doorframe, and as they approached the house and stood cautiously in the open doorway, Dean could see bits of furniture strewn around; scraps of torn cloth. Blood. It _stank_ of blood, sweet and cloying, so thick it seemed to cling to their skin.

 He paused, and when he spoke, his voice was low. He lifted his gun, and levelled it at the doorway; Castiel followed suit, the gun still strange in his hand, though he’d used one before.

“Think there’s anything in there?” he asked Castiel warily, pitching his voice so low he could barely hear it, himself, and Castiel looked at him and nodded curtly, once.

Dean put his hand on the doorframe and pushed himself into the cabin shoulder-first, hand splayed wide against the wall, his steps edging and careful. The place was even more of a mess than he’d anticipated; claw-marks were gouged into every surface, long, pained tracks raked across floorboards and the walls. The furniture, when not in pieces, was splintered, chipped and cracked, hacked into shards. For a moment, squinting in the low light, Dean couldn’t even see it, despite what Castiel said – and then his eyes alighted on a ball of rags in the corner, filthy and matted and stinking of shit and gore – and it moved.

“Don’t come in! It’s not safe!” A voice came muffled from beneath the material, and Dean rolled his eyes.

“Too late, man,” he said back, bravado creeping in out of habit, rather than genuine courage. Castiel came in through the doorway and stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Dean, his eyes on the quivering heap in the corner.

The heap shifted – lengthened, as Stuart stood up. His arms were lifted in the air, palms out; he was naked, filthy, covered in blood and fur. His hands were the worst of it; one of them was clearly wounded, blackened with dirt around the cut; the other was muddy, ash-dark from too many days and too few showers, Dean gathered. A little too much running around in the fucking forest.

“Oh,” Stuart said, his eyes on the gun clutched tightly against Dean’s palm. He smiled, softly. “Great. Shoot me,” he murmured, his eyes wide, glinting when Castiel turned his flashlight on him. Shadows flashed over the walls when Castiel’s hand wavered. Dean levelled his gun at the man in the corner, a little firmer.

“You’re making this easier than I’m used to.” Castiel flashed a glance at him, but said nothing. Stuart, arms still lifted, hung his head away from the bright light shining in his eyes. He coughed.

“I’m ready to go,” he said, and Dean knew false courage when he heard it. Castiel’s hand folded over his wrist, surprising his grip – making the gun swing wide. He jerked his hand out of Cas’ and held the gun steady with both hands, horrified.

“Cas, don’t do that – I could have shot you,” he hissed, though Stuart had made no move to take advantage of the situation; he stayed against the back wall of the cabin, surrounded by shitty blankets, his skin coated in so many layers of dirt that Dean wondered exactly how long he’d been hiding out. Castiel jerked the flashlight, sending the stream of light flashing from Stuart’s face to his chest, and back again.

“Why do you want us to kill you?” he asked, and Dean barked his name, a warning, but Castiel kept on – he stepped a little closer. Stuart shrank against the wall, eyes on his feet.

“I’m a monster,” he said simply, and though all three of them knew it was the truth, it was still strange to hear it from the horse’s mouth, like this. Castiel stepped slightly closer.

“You’re Stuart, I assume.”

The man looked at him – in the light, Dean could make out the face they’d seen in the picture, though it was streaked with grime; brown hair, slightly too long, hanging around his eyes; a half-lined, middle-aged face; a face like pretty much anyone else’s. He thought maybe it was ironic, Stuart looking so fucking normal, being so normal, aside from the fact that he’d torn the beating heart from a child’s chest about a week before. The flashlight’s brightness made him look overexposed; alien. The whites of his eyes stood out. “Yes,” he said, and he sounded like he was starving. “Yeah. How did you know?” his voice trembled. Castiel stopped a few feet from him.

“We met your wife.”

“’Lyssa. Is she – she’s okay, right? I didn’t – oh my god-” his words spilled from his mouth; Dean cleared his throat.

“She’s fine.”

“Thank god. Thank god.” He looked at Dean, then at Castiel. “Does she know? Does she know what I am, what-” he swallowed. “What I did?”

“No,” Dean said, before Castiel could answer. The three of them stood silently, placed in a triangle; the flashlight, the two guns, all pointed at Stuart. He lowered his arms slightly; Dean’s hands tightened so hard on the gun that his knuckles went white. “Stay where you are!” he bellowed, too loud; Castiel didn’t look at him but his shoulder twitched, and Dean knew he was overreacting but something felt wrong here, something huge was wrapped around his ribs, and now he was too far away to take Castiel’s hand and try to ground himself; in the back of his head he could hear screaming, white-noise sound, but he didn’t know where it was coming from.

“Okay. Okay. I’m sorry.” Stuart lifted his hands again. “I just – she’s okay? Really?”

“She’s fine,” Castiel told him, softer than Dean had. “Stuart, why are you here?”

Dean stepped forward abortively; Stuart flinched, eyes flashing between them. Castiel lowered the light in his hand, and Stuart raised his gaze to Castiel’s face.

“I – you know,” his breath shuddered. “It wasn’t the first time.”

“There’ve been others,” Castiel said, before Dean could speak up. Stuart nodded.

“I’m – it happened before Africa, before we met. I loved her so much, I thought I could control it; I thought maybe-” he averted his gaze, again. “It’s kids. I don’t know why. Adults, too – couple of them, but kids-” he swallowed. “It was so much-” his hands balled into fists. “It’s so much better,” he murmured to the floorboards, and Castiel didn’t move, but Dean reeled back, feet clunking on the wooden floor, and Stuart looked at him guiltily.

“It’s not me, I swear, when I’m not – like that – I would never-” he shook his head. “Never,” He shook his head again, rattling it from side-to-side like he’d been shaken. “I never let her have them. Because of me.”

“So, what? You picked off the neighbours instead?” Dean was yelling; the white noise was crackling around his ears. He felt as if the trees outside were clawing their way in, flattening their leaves over his eyes, over his mouth. He couldn’t breathe, and he was so angry with Stuart’s carefully pious expression; with the way he was appealing to Cas, like it mattered what he said. “You didn’t want to kill your own kids, but it’s cool to kill someone else’s?”

Stuart shrugged uselessly. “I couldn’t help it,” he said, and he turned his eyes on Dean, shiny in the splaying light from the flashlight held in Castiel’s hand. Dean’s gun shook in his hands – not from fear, but from rage. Stuart looked at Castiel, knowing that this one was who he could appeal to. Dean had no idea what was happening; the Castiel he knew was angry more often than not; he delivered judgement like few people Dean had ever known, his aim swift, unwavering; and here he was, coaxing the sob story out of a werewolf that, in a few moments, would be just another body. “Can I go see her? Can I say goodbye?” he said, and Dean barked a hysterical laugh.

“Yeah, we’ll throw you a fucking leaving party,” he snorted. Stuart’s face fell.

“I- sorry.” He closed his eyes, briefly, and when he looked up again it was at Cas; pleading. “Will you tell her what happened to me? Will you let her bury me?”

Castiel nodded. Dean spluttered.

“You killed a fucking kid.”

“Please. Not for me. For her.” He smiled bitterly. “Closure?”

“For _her_ ,” Dean spat. Castiel turned to look at him; Stuart twitched forward from the wall. “Don’t move!” Dean warned him again; the buzzing in his head rose, crested; he couldn’t hear, couldn’t really see; he thought he felt the curve of a branch winding around his leg, and jerked it away. Castiel was looking at him, but Dean couldn’t look back, couldn’t breathe.

Stuart inched forward again. Dean fired.

Once; twice. A third time, a fourth; a fifth, a sixth, emptying the barrel of bullets, the slugs slamming into the centre of Stuart’s bare chest.

His body dropped. Dean stared; the gun was hot in his hands.

Stuart was slumped forward; his legs bunched together behind him, back bent unnaturally, his face pressed hard into the floorboards. The air quickly stank of fresh copper; Dean dropped the gun.

Fuck. But he didn’t say anything; Castiel stepped forward to crouch beside the body. He ran a hand over his hair.

“Was that necessary?” he muttered, and Dean had no answer, and the wailing in his head hadn’t stopped.

 

\---

Back at the motel, Dean waited until Castiel was asleep before he rose from the bed, and went outside.

It couldn’t have been later than three in the morning; twilight was etched over the tarmac of the parking lot, and Dean sat on the curb outside the motel room, trying to gather himself.

He kept running through what happened, in his head. The sick noise of the bullets slamming into the werewolf’s body, one by one. The silent drive back to the motel, leaving Stuart’s corpse behind for someone else to recover.

He wished he had something to do with his hands. Even the parking lot was motionless, the only sound the slow hum of traffic moving down the road alongside the motel.

He jumped when his phone started to buzz in his pocket. Startled, he pulled it out and looked at it – it wasn’t a number he recognised. He answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“Dean.”

The voice came over a whirr of static so loud that Dean could barely make out the word. He was reminded of all those years ago, his Dad’s voice coming strange over the line; but it wasn’t his dad’s voice. It wasn’t even really a voice at all; the noise on the line had sounded organic, not like speech but like the shattering of window-glass, a deep, thrumming tremor, that had somehow come out as his name.

The line went dead.

He sat in the parking lot with his phone in his palm until dawn.

 

\---

 

On the ride home, Castiel was mostly silent. Dean had gone back to bed, eventually, but when he woke again around eight, Castiel was gone. He came back without a word around eleven, and he and Dean exchanged a few cursory sentences to get them into the car, but little else.

He didn’t really understand why Cas had reacted like that; one image remained in his head, and it was of the crumpled body on the floor, and how Castiel’s hands hovered over it as blood and breath leaked from it, shuddering.

He’d gone so silent.

Dean turned up the radio, just for some noise, halfway home; and that was when Castiel decided to speak.

“Why did you do it?” he said, not really a question, but he paused to allow Dean to answer, nonetheless. Dean didn’t take his eyes off the road as he spoke. Castiel reached over and turned the radio down again.

“He killed a kid.”

“I told his wife,” Castiel blurted, and then Dean _did_ look at him.

“Are you crazy?”

\---

 

“No,” Castiel replied curtly, reacting like Dean had hit him, flinching; hands folded in his lap. He looked out of the side window. “She needed to know.”

“Yeah? How’d she take it?”

“Not well.”

“Big surprise.”

Castiel was silent for a moment. “I think I did the right thing,” he said, and Dean couldn’t contain his snort of derision; Castiel’s hands balled into fists. “He loved her very much. She deserved to know how he died,” he said.

“He wasn’t human.”

Castiel took a long time to reply, again. “Yes. Well,” he said, stiffly, “Neither am I.”

Dean looked at him – at Castiel’s tight, restrained expression – and faltered. “Cas, it’s different with you. It’s just – it’s not the same.”

“How is it different?”

“Well, first off, you’ve never killed a kid.”

“Yes I have.”

Dean almost slammed his foot on the brake, at that, but managed to control himself. “Cas.”

“Read the Old Testament, Dean. There’s a lot we – I – did, that I regret.”

“That’s not the same either! You had whoever’s hand up your butt, telling you what to do.”

“Wasn’t he made a puppet by his condition?”

“It’s a condition, now?”

“It wasn’t his fault.”

“I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

Castiel sighed, world-weary. “Okay.” He paused. “I’m sorry if what I did bothers you.”

Dean echoed his sigh, and tried to pry his hands from their too-tight grip on the wheel. “Don’t worry about it, Cas. Just – maybe she was better off not knowing, you know? Better off thinking everything was okay.”

Castiel nodded, and turned the radio up again. Dean didn’t know the song.


	4. Chapter 4

“I’m sorry,” he said when they got home, Castiel’s feet crunching on the gravel path that led to their front door. Castiel turned, hand on the doorknob, and looked at him.

“Dean,” and he sighed, and he smiled. He reached for Dean when he came close enough, and touched his arm. “I’m sorry. Something about it just – jarred with me.” He paused. “You’re right. You did the right thing.”

For the next couple of weeks, that was that; Dean worked at Bobby’s and came home with oil-stained fingers; Sam spent all day in the library, came back, complained about how hard he was working, and then went to bed to start all over again. Castiel drifted around the house, rarely leaving but to go on long walks, and Dean never thought to ask to join him.

He summarised, briefly, the hunt to Sam; but for some reason the subject was touchy, and he didn’t mention that he and Castiel shared a bed, nor did he think to tell _anyone_ that his own bed felt strange and empty without Castiel’s short, measured breaths filling the air around it.

Something had changed, though; imperceptibly. Dean didn’t know if it was him that changed, or Castiel, or the world itself, at large; he felt weird, itchy under his skin, and it came to a head when he was in the scrapyard, clearing up after himself, and Bobby came to see him.

“Got somethin’ small in the west, if you’re jonesin’ for it,” he said, sounding loath to mention it, even as he uttered the words. Dean, wiping futilely at his stained hands with a rag, looked up.

“Yeah?”

“Some kinda spook, makin’ people nervous.” He looked away, and shrugged; his eyes lowered to the ground. “It’s yours, unless you’ve got somethin’ better to do.”

Dean looked at him for a long moment, moving the rag slowly over his fingers; winding it around each digit, brushing the skin of his palms. It didn’t work; the oil just blurred or blended with his skin.

He thought of that last hunt; how for the last few weeks Castiel had been friendly but distant. How the dreams had gotten worse; how that phonecall unsettled him, the voice as if shouting across a void, so _unearthly_ in its volume, in its pitch.

He looked at his hands, and he smiled softly. “Nah.”

Bobby looked at him and raised a brow in disbelief. “Throwin’ in the towel?”

“Just taking a vacation,” Dean corrected him, and Bobby smiled like he was an idiot.

“Yeah, well. Send me a postcard,” he said, rolling his eyes, and Dean followed him back inside, close at his heels.

It felt weird to turn it down, but good, too; it was late, but he could drive home through the autumn dusk and tell Sammy, and make him smile. Tell Cas, too.

With each mile the car ate up, his heart felt a little lighter; even driving through the darkness, trees lining the road on either side, he started feeling better; _good,_ even. It was okay, making a choice like this; maybe, even, it was a positive thing. Sam had been pestering him to get out of the game since the apocalypse, and maybe the time was now; to take a little break, to take stock of the things in his life.

He thought of Castiel; the curve of his sleeping back in the dark, the warm cadence of his breathing. The way that, sometimes, if he thought about it hard enough, Dean would dream that they slept beside each other every night; that every morning was like that soft, clear morning in the motel, where Castiel’s smell - like laundry, like linen and autumn air – soaked the pillows like a liquid, and dragged out of Dean’s bones a light that suffused with his skin before his dreams ended fully. A strange glow that settled around the edges of his vision before everything came into focus; and when he finally woke, he felt strange and embarrassed to have felt it at all. Especially so strongly, so thickly, as that.

Headlights flashing over bumps in the road, in the darkness, Dean drove on. It wasn’t far to get home; maybe twenty miles, and he liked to take the drive. It was peaceful, somehow; it calmed him, especially after he and Bobby inevitably rubbed each other up the wrong way all day. Too similar by far, Castiel once told him, and Dean hadn’t spoken to him for at _least_ a day, after; but he was right. Bobby was basically Future Dean, and though the thought should have terrified him, considering Bobby was a grizzled old shut-in who, to be honest, wasn’t much to look at, it didn’t. Bobby was also the father he’d never really had; not perfect, but pretty damned good.

Lately that pang had followed him around, when it came to Bobby; sometimes, even when they fought, Dean would grin to himself, just glad that Bobby was _there_ at all.

He rounded a corner and everything went black.

He stopped the car.

Everything was cold, and silent. The forest had snuck up on him without him noticing; on the drive up it had kept a respectful distance, had hardly bothered him at all; but suddenly foliage brushed the car windows, screeched at the doors; a gentle rapping on his window was the wind plucking at twigs, brushing them against the glass. It _terrified_ him.

Against his better judgement, he got out of the car; his knees were weak with fear, even though he’d seen worse, seen Hell, seen the fucking _devil_ and fought, and won; but he crouched and thrashed his against the thicket of trees; grazing the backs of his hands on their trunks, fingers scraped bloody, bits of bark sticking thick under his fingernails, pushing them up in a way that made his skin seem to crawl and shift over his organs. The car, left behind, was quickly swallowed by the forest; all the hairs on the back of his neck pulled up.

He fought his way through, tearing his skin bloody, not knowing where he was going; he thought maybe he’d taken a wrong turn somewhere along the line because there was no _way_ it had grown so fast in so little time, no _way_ this was the same route home he’d taken dozens, hundreds of times before.

He stumbled out into a clearing, and fell sharply to his knees. In the darkness, everything looked grey; gone was the road, the comforting tarmac beneath his shoes; here, instead, was a cold, bare circle of dust; and the shape of it, the ring, made his stomach tighten and pull up, as if he was going to vomit. He swallowed, hard, to keep down the sandwich he’d had at Bobby’s.

He used his hands to push himself up from the dirt; but before he could stand, knees stinging from the impact of the ground, he heard a whirr, like static; a high, shrill cry, like a bird being squeezed of its last breath; like a mix of something chemical and organic crashing together at high speed, sparking over the whole forest with a sharp, unholy _roar._

He would have moved his hands from the dirt; covered his ears, if he had time; but he didn’t, and the noise, though _deafening,_ ended quickly.

When he looked up again, he was kneeling in the middle of the highway, blinded by his own headlights. The road was black and sure beneath his knees, and though when he stood his legs almost gave out on him, it stayed there - the woods safely pushed back behind the metal barrier that lined the highway on both sides.

He followed the headlights back to the car, their conical light shining hard on his face, so bright in the darkness that he had to shield his eyes with his hands as he stumbled towards them. He was about fifty feet from the car, but crashing through the forest he’d have guessed much further.

But there was no forest; no shrill, otherworldly cry; no scratches or tears in his clothes or flesh from the unforgiving branches.

He felt fine, if weak; there was a line of cars behind the Impala when he finally reached it, and the drivers inside beeped incessantly for him to move. He didn’t know how long it had been since he left the car; he didn’t know what time it was.

He flipped the other drivers the bird and shakily started the car, to drive home.

The sight of the trees on either side of the road filled him with a viscous and terrible fear.

When he got in, it was late; it had taken him longer to drive home than usual. He was shaken, still; weird stuff happened to him all the time, sure, but this was different somehow; something had rocked him to his core, and as he shut the front door behind him all he wanted to do was to fold himself into bed, and go to sleep.

But he walked through the living room and the sight that greeted him stopped him in his tracks.

Castiel was curled – actually _curled –_ lazily on the couch, remote in hand. His feet were bare, tucked up beneath him, and it was the sight of his naked toes that sapped Dean of all the impetus he’d ever had to go to bed.

He wandered up to the back of the couch, climbed over it, and sat down; a respectful distance away, but close. His encounter on the road forgotten, for the moment, he looked at the TV.

“What’s this?”

Castiel turned his head as if only just noticing he’d arrived. “It’s called _Vanilla Sky.”_

“Huh.” Dean shifted in his seat, and it didn’t escape him that Castiel smiled when their shoulders brushed. “Did Sam show you this? He loves Sam Mendes.”

“Who’s Sam Mendes?” Castiel asked him, but in a tone of voice that suggested it was rhetorical. “It was on.” He shrugged, and yawned. Dean leaned up to take his jacket off, and dropped it to the ground, leaving himself in just a t-shirt, stained with oil and dirt from being around the cars all day. There were smudges all over the hem, where he’d thumbed at it.

“You should go to bed, if you’re tired.”

“I was waiting for you to come home.”

There was something unaccountably endearing about that, and it made Dean turn away from the television to look at him, only to find that Castiel’s eyes were already trained on his face. “Ah. Sorry I was late.”

“Traffic?”

“Something like that.” He wondered why it didn’t seem appropriate to talk to Cas about what happened; he could still feel the dirt underfoot, still feel the loamy darkness all over his body, like filth. He wanted a shower but, honestly, he didn’t really want to be alone. Not right this second.

“Is it close to the end?” He yawned, maybe just because Castiel had; Castiel was still looking at him.

“I think so,” he said, and his voice was lower than before, and soft.

“Bobby had another hunt for me, today,” Dean blurted, strangely proud; Castiel looked back at the television.

“I don’t think I want to come with you, this time,” Castiel told him quietly, and though his words stung a little, Dean shrugged, jostling Castiel in his seat.

“Turned him down,” he said, and again Castiel turned to look at him.

“That’s not like you.”

Dean shrugged. “I’m taking a break.” There was a long, strange pause where Castiel’s eyes swept over his face, as if looking for the catch; Dean found himself smiling. “Thought maybe we could talk.”

“About what?”

Dean swallowed, and then sighed. “Nothing,” he said. “It doesn’t matter.”

Castiel nodded affably, and settled back into his seat; on the screen, Tom Cruise, disfigured, stumbled around in a dark club. Dean tried to concentrate on that, instead of the fact that Castiel’s hand had found the back of his, and his warm fingertips were trailing over the peaks of his knuckles, drawing slow, deliberate whorls over his skin.

They sat there, slumped against each other, watching the movie; Castiel’s bare feet ended up tucked beneath Dean, and his hand kept its pressure constant, leaving only when Castiel briefly extricated himself from the couch to make a cup of cocoa for Dean, tea for himself.

When Tom Cruise’s character stood on the precipice of a building, contemplating life, the universe and everything (or something like that; Dean wasn’t paying all that much attention) Castiel’s head fell onto his shoulder, and his thumb folded around Dean’s palm. At first, Dean thought he’d fallen asleep, and he kept still so as not to disturb him; but as the credits rolled, Castiel muttered, “That was very melodramatic,” from the general vicinity of his neck, and Dean laughed so hard he was _sure_ he’d wake Sam.

Then he turned, and he wasn’t laughing anymore.

“Cas,” he said, very quietly, as whatever strange air that had built between them during the movie thickened to ridiculous levels, and Castiel was close enough that Dean could feel his breath; close enough to kiss. This was the time, he knew it was, but his mouth had different ideas entirely. “When I was out on the road, I think I hallucinated.”

“What?”

“I got out of the car, I saw – the forest, it was all over me, it was everywhere, and then I fell, and I heard this _noise,_ and – I don’t know what it was but it hurt, and then I stood up and it was like it never happened.” The words came out in a garbled rush, breaking the tension with laser-point accuracy, and Dean immediately regretted his decision to say anything at all.

“Are you alright? Did you get hurt? What did the noise sound like?”

“I can’t really remember,” he said, feeling more and more embarrassed by the second. So he was a little crazy; okay. No need to stress Cas out about it, for god’s sake.

“Take me to where it happened,” Castiel said, and Dean, surprised, shook his head immediately.

“I really don’t want to. It wasn’t – fun.”

Castiel nodded, and fell silent. His hand still held Dean’s.

In a cautious, slow movement, he leaned over; he tilted his head, slowly pushing forward, and when his nose was scant inches from Dean’s, he paused. “We’ll talk more about this in the morning,” he said, and kissed him.

There should have been something else on his mind but if he was perfectly honest, with Castiel’s mouth giving slowly under his, all Dean could think about were the long, wide, sinewed shapes of Castiel’s bare feet. They were warm, and Dean found Castiel’s foot between them with a hand as he pushed closer; he wrapped his hand loosely around the bulge of Castiel’s ankle and held it as they kissed.

Castiel was so strange and unrestrained; just as he was in speech, he was, here; bluntly honest, and inexperienced, but _there._ Profoundly _present,_ almost unnervingly so; there was no room to lose himself in anything but the feel of Castiel’s exquisitely formed ankle in his hand, and the feverish way that Castiel kissed him back; the surprised noise he made when Dean opened his mouth and kissed him deeper, Castiel’s hands pulling at him, touching him everywhere; sliding under the hem of his filthy shirt, grabbing at the soft flesh of his hips, taking hold of his collar and pulling him down against the couch, on top of Castiel.

There was a shift; Dean started laughing against Castiel’s cheek, and found himself unable to stop. He said, “Sorry,” still laughing softly, and Castiel dropped his head back against the arm of the couch, but he was smiling.

Arms bracketed either side of Castiel’s face, Dean pushed up, and looked down at him. He was grinning like a fucking _fool._

“Hello, Dean.” His gums showed when he smiled this wide, and it made Dean want to kiss him again.

“Jesus,” he gasped a little for breath; his heart was going fifty times its usual pace, and every inch of him felt as if it was straining for calm. “That – we should have done this a long time ago.”

Castiel rolled his eyes as if that much was obvious, then squirmed up onto his elbows, and looked up at Dean. “Everything’s going to be fine,” he said, leaning up to brush the swell of his lips carefully against Dean’s mouth.

Dean looked at him, sobered. “You sure?” he said, warily; that creeping feeling was still just under the surface of his skin, and he wanted to tear it off, almost, to get to it. Something was _wrong_ about what had happened on the road, and it wasn’t the surreal hallucination, or even the noise; there was something wrong about the forest, something wrong about the way the creature – for it must have been a creature, it was _definitely_ alive- had howled. Like it was calling to him. Like it was in pain.

“Of course not,” Castiel said primly, and Dean laughed, and shuffled backwards; got to his feet, and offered a hand to Castiel to pull him up, which Cas dutifully ignored.

They walked, side by side, to the stairs, and Castiel looked at him when they reached the top banister. “Would you like to sleep with me, tonight?” he asked, and Dean didn’t even read the double entendre, he just nodded, thinking briefly of his own cold bedroom, and then of being in bed with Castiel, warm, and safe.

“Yeah, okay.”

He followed Castiel back to his room, and when he woke again in the morning, he thought he might still be dreaming, seeing Castiel there; the long, smooth planes of his back; the smell of linen and woodsmoke curled inside his nose, around his head.

Somehow everything was brighter, some core inside Dean warmer; pulsing softly, like light shining through a canopy of leaves.

\---

The next morning it was as if nothing had changed. Apart from the different bed, the different company, things proceeded as usual; Sam went for his run, and seemed not to notice that anything was askew; Castiel made tea in the morning, and offered Dean coffee, which he declined. Dean busied himself, yesterday’s incident on the road all but forgotten.

He was just about to leave for Bobby’s when he realised something _had_ changed; he went back into the kitchen and found Castiel by the counter.

“I’m gonna go,” he said, pointlessly, and Castiel nodded, sitting on the counter, Dean’s copy of Raymond Carver’s _Cathedral,_ unabashedly stolen, in his hand.

“Alright,” Castiel said absently – but Dean summoned his bravery and went over; touched his arm, his hand; made Castiel pull the book away from his face.

“One for luck?” he said, and immediately felt like the biggest _dork –_ but he couldn’t say _kiss me,_ either. Castiel grinned at him widely, and hopped off the counter. He took Dean’s face in both his hands.

“Have a good day,” he said quietly, and for a moment it was like they’d been doing this forever; Castiel seeing him off, pressing a kiss to his mouth like it wasn’t earth-shattering.

Dean held him by his forearms; kept him there, still, for a moment; if only to convince himself that the solid weight of Castiel under his hands wasn’t a dream.

“You’ll be late,” Castiel said, tone gently chiding, and Dean laughed, embarrassed.

“Yeah,” he said, and then leaned forward and kissed him again; loved the heady rush of it, how every tip of their heads together felt like a battle fought and won. “You – have a good day, too.”

“I will.” Castiel was laughing at him, now; he let him go, and his hands felt empty.

It was only mid-morning  by the time he was halfway to Bobby’s, but he found himself squinting in the darkness, debating whether to put his headlights on, futilely trying to feel his way along the road on what was almost all guesswork.

The trees had thickened to a canopy, overhead.

Dean, not even knowing if there was anyone else on the road, made a U-turn so fast that it made his stomach jolt, and twenty minutes later he was home, stumbling from the car, shutting the door behind him; sliding down the black sheen of the impala, and crumpling to the ground in a heap.

He dug his hands into his hair, and tried to breathe.

Somewhere in the distance he heard that noise, again; it was so loud he wondered why it wasn’t all over the radio, why the newspapers weren’t screaming about it; why Castiel couldn’t hear it last night, and why he wasn’t running outside, now, to see what the commotion was.

His breath punched thickly in and out of his lungs, and he sat with his knees pulled to his chest for a long moment, hands tugging on his hair, ripping out strands.  

No one came out of the house; no one appeared from the surrounding houses, either.

Dean wondered for a moment if he was the only person left in the world; everything else evaporated by that long string of sound that obliterated thought; that erased everything except the dark, cloying scent of pine and blood. It was still in his nose, now.

He staggered to his feet, and got back into the car.

He didn’t even know where he was driving to; he tore in the opposite direction of Bobby’s house and punched it along winding, unfamiliar roads; ripped past nearby towns, past diners and motels familiar, and others not so much. He didn’t really know anything except that every inch of bare dirt filled him with dread, and the reaching tendrils of tree branches seemed to clutch for him, no matter how far he went.

He should have talked to Cas about it.

Maybe he really _was_ going mad.

With an acute and desperate need, he wished Sam were beside him. Things were just starting to go _right_ for him; he was sober, his little brother was happy, he and Cas were _something,_ finally; but even with all this good there was still something scrambling after him, and it didn’t feel like a normal monster.

Eventually, he pulled over to the side of the road, and got out.

He didn’t know where he was; the driving had passed in a blur, and if he didn’t know better he might have assumed that someone had simply plucked him from his driveway and dropped him here, car and all, no journey needed.

Ahead of him, fields were spread out; the road was hot, too hot for autumn, and dusty under his feet. The fields were full of waving corn, and Dean watched the wind ripple it in languorous strokes, the stalks flowing like an ocean, from this distance.

He sometimes found himself thinking how strange it was that everything was so beautiful from far away; how the ocean, or a lake, as a blue, solid shape was a stunning and seemingly perfect thing; but up close it was cold, or itchy with sand, or too choppy and rough to enter. It was the same here, the same with rolling green fields, with aching deserts; from a distance they were just colours, warm and yellow, or green, or tan, and _safe._

But up close they could be dangerous or deadly or just disappointing, and there was nothing he could do about it.

He slumped against the car, its doors heated from the sun.

He watched the field, undulating, and tried to calm down; Bobby would be angry, or worried, depending on how long he’d been gone; Castiel wouldn’t know where he was, and neither would Sam, when he came home from college. Maybe Castiel would think he’d freaked out on him, and left; maybe Sam would assume he’d finally broken, and gone on a bender; ended up passed out somewhere in the gutter, or fucking some waitress carelessly in one of the endless, anonymous motels they were always passing.

He wanted the booze, now, if only to make everything go away; but he was different now, and however much he wanted it, he wanted the shame and the guilt and the disappointment even less. He was better than that, better than one night stands and rough hands; better than hustling pool just to make it another fifty fucking miles. He _had_ to believe that, after three years.

He was terrified to go back, because out here the forest was gone; he couldn’t smell anything, couldn’t hear any noise but the soft twittering of birds in some undisclosed location; that strange smell of sunlight outdoors. But back that way was the creeping fear again, the noise of that ancient, dying beast; the smell of blood, so familiar, under his tongue.

His phone started to ring, and he answered it.

“Dean?” Cas’ voice, not the creature’s, called his name. “Did something happen again? Where are you?”

Dean looked up; the sun still hung, fat and yellow in the sky. He sighed deeply. “Could you come pick me up?”

It was dusk when both his brother and Cas appeared to ‘rescue’ him. Castiel drove the impala home – Dean didn’t even argue, and Sam’s face tightened with worry – and Sam and Dean followed behind in Sam’s clean, featureless Toyota, Sam’s ipod hooked up to the radio dock, and playing a song Dean only vaguely recognised.

“What the hell happened?”

Dean wound down one of the windows and leaned out of it, staring at the endless golden fields they passed, as the light receded from the horizon. “I don’t know,” he replied, truthfully, and Sam snorted angrily.

“You must know _something._ We were freaking out! Bobby called and said you didn’t show up, and the Cas said something about you _hallucinating?”_ Sam’s voice was sharp with anxiety. “Did you – are you okay?”

Dean looked at his brother, who had his hands firmly at ten and two; his eyes fixed on the road. He was reminded of all the times that Sam had gone to school and Dean had hunted instead; Dean had picked him up from school and entertained him on the way home with stories about what he and their dad had done that day; half-truths, mostly. Sometimes they’d pull over, and get themselves something from a drive-through, careful to open the windows, letting the smell out so that dad wouldn’t know they were wasting their money on crap.

“Met any girls at college?” he said, not answering the question, and Sam’s gaze on him was sudden and incredulous before he turned back to the road.

“Is that what this is about?”

“Just making conversation.”

“I’m worried about you,” Sam said softly, and his grip on the wheel was tight. “First buying the beer, then being weird with Cas, now this-“

“Who said I was being weird with Cas?”

“Dean, I’m not _blind._ I know something happened when you guys went on that hunt together.”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s fine if you don’t want to talk about it,” Sam offered, keeping close to the impala, driving ahead. “But I’m just saying, stuff like this – you just _disappeared._ I didn’t know what had happened to you, or if you were okay, and I- I just want to know what’s going on with you.”

“I think I’m cursed,” Dean said, trailing his fingers in the slipstream out of the window. His voice came out much more tired than he’d intended; Sam looked at him, but said nothing. There was a weighted pause before Dean said, “I was trying to go to Bobby’s, I swear but I just –“ _couldn’t_ , was the word, but he couldn’t explain it; it was ridiculous, even considering how many ridiculous things they’d encountered. Sam still said nothing, though; he went on. “I keep seeing things, and hearing things. I’m-” he paused. “Cas kissed me.”

Sam laughed, which surprised him, and made his stomach plunge into his boots; but when he looked up, Sam was smiling.

“I thought you guys had started doing that _years_ ago.”

“Yeah, well.” He stopped. Sam cleared his throat.

“So is that what happened on the hunt? Did it make things awkward?”

“No. It only happened last night. It’s not – it’s not awkward at all, actually.” On the contrary, it felt like something _stable;_ Dean was surprised, already, by the heft of Castiel’s definite attention, his care. He’d always had it, of course; he just never realised how much. “It’s fine.” He paused. “It’s good.”

“’Bout time.”

“Shut up.”

“Dean,” he said, after a few more moments of silence; the air, strangely warm for the season, curled around Dean’s fingers, out of the open window. “What’ve you been seeing?”

Dean swallowed. “You know. Standard crazy guy stuff. Forests trying to eat me, weird noises,” he tried to sound cavalier about it, but Sam’s frown deepened.

“And it stopped you going to Bobby’s?”

“It just – made it kinda difficult.”

“Y’think it’s a witch? Some kind of spirit, or something?”

“I don’t know. It doesn’t feel …witchy.”

“Like you’d know,” Sam scoffed, but it was gentle, and tinged with anxiety. The car rolled on, and eventually they reach the road close to their home, lined with trees; but Dean felt okay, actually, in the car with Sam. The trees were just trees; the forest was just a forest. He was okay.

Back at the house, all three of them sat down in the kitchen; Castiel hovered in the background, unsure; Sam, as usual, confronted the thing straight away. “Okay, so do you think it’s you, or someone else?”

Dean looked at his hands. “I don’t know. Part of me says me, but I’m not sure I’ve got that good an imagination, you know?” he shrugged. “And it felt so fucking _real.”_

Castiel, from behind him, said, “Sometimes even something that’s only in your head can feel very, very real,” with the kind of decisiveness that suggested he’d been there; Dean didn’t ask.

“I don’t know.” His bones ached; even just driving that fucking car out to god knows where had dredged all the strength from his body, and his eyelids felt heavy. “I’m gonna go to sleep. See how everything looks in the morning.” He raised himself from his chair, and the eyes of both his brother and Castiel bored into him, making him embarrassed. There was nothing wrong, as far as he knew; weird stuff happened all the fucking time. He was fine.

No matter that the thought of driving to Bobby’s again made his heart beat a thousand times faster than it was supposed to; he was _fine._

He got into Castiel’s bed, in the end, after pulling on a t-shirt and letting his jeans fall off his ankles, onto the floor. It wasn’t yet fully dark inside, but sleep grabbed hold of him anyway, and pulled him tight to its chest.

\---

_He’s faster than he’s ever been; the blade flashes between his fingers, and he is dancing almost, moving fluid, so fast, so fast._

_The gush of blood over his wrist surprises him, but he does it again; his heart tightens around his ribs because this is what he is supposed to do, what he was supposed to be, really, but it feels wrong; blood is hot and sticky, and makes his hands slip; in the grass around him, burn-marks litter the ground._

_It’s always the same; the flicker of life in their eyes, then gone; the twitch of the sword in his hand, his palm tacky and stained, gripping tightly though his fingers ache, though all he wants – all he’s wanted for a long time, now – is to lie down and go to sleep._

_A noise surprises him, and he turns; the garden here is radiant, his favourite, but he is burning it to the ground with the bodies. They came to find him but he thought he was alone now, that they were gone. His heart is pumping on desperation and need. The noise is one he recognises – the voice of someone he considers a friend, though the man does not know him._

_The man is flying a kite, and he stumbles; he is laughing. The kite is diamond-shaped, blue and yellow and red and green. It flies sure, because the wind here is always perfect; the soil always soft and sprung, the weather eternally beautiful._

_He rushes forward to catch the man, forgetting himself; his hand lands on his shoulder, and he steadies him, pulls him up._

_But this man doesn’t know him, and he is terrified; he reaches out with his hands to push him away, and in a flare of rage at the unfairness of it all; at how alone he is, at how everyone now flinches from him in fear, at how he has no one else left in the world, only followers and enemies, no_ friends - _his hand blurts ahead before his brain can catch up and give rationale to the movement._

_The blood, over his hand, is sticky again, fresh and warm; the man cries out in agony, and his eyes, splayed wide, are the same colour as the sky._

_The man drops to his knees so slowly, so slowly, and the blade is buried to its hilt inside, and all he can think is that he needs it, needs the sword, needs to pull it out._

_He looks down at himself, at his hands, and sees no one that he recognises._

_The ground is littered with the shapes of wings._


	5. Chapter 5

Dean didn’t go to work, the next day.

Sam and Cas let it go; he didn’t really want to go outside at all, the thought making him feel anxious, and his dreams from the night before unsettling him. He’d been Cas, in the dream; at least, he was pretty sure he had; but it had been so vivid that it felt like a vision, and he hoped he wasn’t becoming some kind of mystic or fucking mind-reader, because the _last_ thing he needed right now was to be able to see the future. All that mumbo-jumbo bullshit was more Sam’s bag.

He told Castiel about it in the morning, lying facing the ceiling while Castiel sat in bed beside him, engrossed by Raymond Carver. He’d read it already, but he was going back for a second time; when Dean described the dream, he put the book down. His expression was strange; it was early, and outside it was still half-dark. They weren’t touching, but beneath the blankets Dean could _feel_ him, the heat of him, warming the other side of the mattress.

“Do you think it’s some kind of, like, vision, or something?” he said to the ceiling, and Castiel hummed softly.

“I hope not.”

Outside the window, there were no sounds. All morning, the cars had been silent; not a whisper of wind or the crackle of life had disturbed them. It was peaceful, in a strange way; Dean shifted in the bed, sat up, and got out.

“Gonna take a dump,” he said, and Castiel snorted derisively into his book.

He wandered down the hallway, scratching his leg with a hand. In the bathroom, he did his thing, then stood at the sink, washing his hands. The sky outside was ink-wash blue, and pallid; he didn’t give it much thought, and instead turned to the bathroom mirror to look at his face, wondering if maybe something had changed since the last time.

It hadn’t; he hadn’t shaved for a couple of days, so his five o’clock shadow was coming in nicely, but otherwise everything was the same, from the length of his hair to the colour of the skin around his eyes. He couldn’t remember the last time he got a haircut, but he wasn’t due for a new one, at least.

He brushed his teeth absently, humming a tune around the toothbrush. He rinsed his mouth out, spat into the sink, and was just drying his mouth on a towel when he looked into the sink and stared.

Sitting fat in the sink, inconsequential and wet, was a leaf.

He laughed. It looked almost silly, sitting there; so incongruous with the bathroom that it just seemed too ridiculous to have really happened; but there it was, a birch leaf, dark with water, edges plastered to the white basin of the sink.

He reached out a hand to pick it up, curious, and then the back of his throat began to itch.

He coughed another leaf into his palm; stared at it, and then began to gag, hands braced against the sink, pain rocketing up and down his spine. He called Castiel’s name, but no one answered; his hands went white, gripping, as he coughed up another four leaves, all birch, all wet, some half-skeletal; and then he looked into the mirror and was so afraid that his body trembled with the force of it.

In his throat, he could _see it;_ a line, pushing against the skin from the inside, thick and not quite straight. He swallowed, desperately, but he was choking and his breath was coming in sharp, hollow gasps, not pulling in properly. The strange, uncomfortable feeling in his throat intensified with each stunned moment that he stared, until finally he did the only thing he could think to do; he opened his mouth, reached into it, and took hold of the thing that was inside him, desperate beyond everything to _breathe._

The tips of his fingers closed around it; something hard, and damp. He tugged, and it gave; it felt like he was shredding the inside of his throat but the pain of trying to swallow around it was worse, so he kept on pulling. Eventually he was able to get more fingers around it, a better grip; a whole fist. When he could finally bring himself to look, he saw it for what it was.

Protruding from his mouth, soaked with spit and blood, was the long, spindly shape of a birch tree branch.

Tears of pain and horror sprang to his eyes; again, he tried to call for Castiel, but either Cas couldn’t hear him or he wasn’t there anymore, because no one came. Besides, it was hard to pronounce anything with the branch in his mouth, rasping at his throat and getting wider and wider as he pulled it, inch by excruciating inch, from his mouth. Dimly, in his mind, he knew the whole situation was unbelievable; the branch continued to widen, littler twigs sprouting from its base, covered in leaves that flaked easily from it, crackling, brown. The white birch bark was stained pink-red, black in places, and he wondered where in his body that could have come from; if it was tearing his organs apart as he pulled it, killing him; if he might have been better off just leaving the fucking thing _be._

But he pulled, and eventually he felt it; the base of the birch, bulging in his throat, coming up. It caught halfway, and he had to pull so hard that he sobbed, eyes squeezing shut, so close to being able to breathe properly again – or, at least, to run down the fucking hallway and get Castiel to call 911.

The last emerging inches of the birch slipped free and Dean, choking and spluttering, crumpled to the ground, the branch held in both hands, like a sceptre.

Except, it wasn’t a branch at all; it had roots, milk-white, translucent, and soaked in his blood. He coughed, throat heavy as if it still hadn’t left him, and black-red liquid spattered onto the tiles, onto his hands.

It was a tree, two feet tall, and it sat in his hands; bedraggled, and soaked in viscera.

\---

Next thing he knew, he was being shaken awake by a warm hand on his shoulder; Castiel, cradling his face.

“Dean!” he shouted, sounding almost angry; Dean blinked awake, dimly registering the hoarse feeling that pushed against his throat. The bathroom ceiling, painted white, glowed above him.

Dean shot up to sit. “Where is it?”

“Where is _what?_ Did you fall?” Castiel touched his face, feeling his forehead with the back of his hand; Dean shrugged him off.

“No, I didn’t fucking fall, I – where the fuck is it?” And he didn’t want to say, _where’s the fucking tree I just pulled out of my fucking oesophagus,_ for fear that Castiel would tell him it wasn’t _real._

He looked at Castiel, and Cas’s eyes were large with fear. “Dean,” he started, and swallowed; Dean did the same, and realised his throat – his body, in fact – didn’t hurt as much as it probably should. “I’m worried.”

“Me, too,” he said, truthfully, and with Castiel’s help, pulled himself to his feet.

They walked, together, back to the bedroom, and Dean sat on the edge of the bed until Castiel’s hovering pissed him off enough for him to flap his arm and bark, “Cas, sit down, you’re making me really fucking uncomfortable.”

With surprising meekness, Castiel sat; although Dean thought it was more in deference to Dean’s injury than to his authority. He sat next to Dean on the bed, looking at him.

“What happened?”

Dean told him.

Castiel breathed heavier, as he spoke. “I don’t know what’s happening to you.” He reached out, and touched Dean’s face again; curved his palm around his cheek.

“If I’m sick, like – sick in the head, or something – would you be able to tell?”

“I don’t know,” Castiel mused. His hand was warm. “I think so.” His expression went briefly blank, and then he shook his head. “I can’t feel anything medical _or_ magical,” his voice had an edge to it; he sounded lost. “I don’t know what this could be.”

Dean pulled away from Castiel’s hand, and sighed, dipping his head towards his lap. He took hold of Castiel’s hand, and started to play with his fingers. Somehow, Castiel grounded him; when they were apart he felt strange and disconnected, like he had out on the road, the day before; like everything around him was blurry and inconsistent; like how he used to feel when he was fighting to keep up with AA and the world dripped away, fading to become a tundra of untouchable, unexplainable things.

But with Castiel beside him he felt a little more okay; even if he _did_ feel like he’d been shredded from the inside-out.

Before he followed Cas downstairs, Dean chanced another glance at the window. From where he was standing he could see the sky, but little else; everything looked faded and dark, like silhouettes lying flat in the distance, and he turned away from the window, dread rising within him. The world felt strange, shaky; he went quickly to his room and dug in his dresser for the medallion Sam had given him, its soft weight a comfort. He slipped it into his pocket.

When he finally joined Castiel in the living room, he was awash with thin fear. “Where’s Sam?” Dean asked him, and Castiel shrugged.

“He must be at the library. I wouldn’t worry.”

\---

They searched the internet for hours, as well as some of Bobby’s books they had lying around, but nothing garnered anything promising; no lore about the forest, aside from general fairytale stuff, and Dean _refused_ to believe he was being suckered into any kind of little red riding hood role, no matter how likely it was starting to seem.

They stayed up until two in the morning, pointlessly trawling through masses of mostly useless bullshit, and still Sam didn’t come home; Dean called him, and had called Bobby earlier in the day to ask him about the problem, but neither of them picked up; the phones just rang out, endlessly trilling until Dean hung up himself. At first he panicked, but Castiel reassured him that it was fine; Sam was a grown man, and so was Bobby; both of them could look after themselves. Dean reluctantly agreed.

They brushed their teeth side-by-side. Still, the house was weirdly silent; no birdsong, not even the chorus of annoying car-alarms that Dean was used to starting up the moment before he went to bed. There was no noise except the shush of toothbrushes moving, of the taps running; and, afterwards, in bed, the sound of Castiel’s breath, next to his ear.

“Hey.” He didn’t know why he was whispering, but it seemed appropriate; Castiel, lying facing him, cracked one eye open.

“Mm?”

“Sam’s not here,” he said, and Castiel rolled his eyes.

“I know.” He closed them again, and shuffled as if settling back into sleep – Dean reached out, under the covers, and touched his side, then his arm.

“No, I mean-” The courage seeped out of him, unsure; sure, Cas had kissed him back, but that wasn’t a fucking promise ring. It didn’t _mean_ anything. Not really.

He shuffled closer, nonetheless; pressed as near as he could to Castiel and kissed him, sliding an arm over his waist; around his back. Castiel’s eyes opened again, and from such a small distance away, Dean could pretty much count his eyelashes (not that he was going to). “Hi,” he said, stupidly, and Castiel smiled at him; shuffled that extra distance so they were pressed chest-to-chest, Castiel’s thigh between Dean’s legs.

“Hi,” Castiel echoed, and wasted no time at all in going straight for him, mouth open and warm and wet on Dean’s.

They made out like that, for a while; trading kisses slow and languorous, Castiel sucking on his lower lip, occasionally breaking away to hum and press his lips against the underside of Dean’s jaw. They hadn’t kissed since the first time, really; just the occasional peck when they woke in the morning, and Dean had forgotten how incredible it felt to do this; to be allowed to touch every inch of Castiel he could reach. It was even more overwhelming for Castiel to be rocking against him, a slow roil, thigh slowly coaxing Dean’s cock to full attention in his boxers, making his breath catch every time Castiel moved against him. He could feel, too, the shape of Castiel’s own arousal, the tented fabric of his pyjama pants sliding against Dean’s inner thigh. He drew breath with difficulty; broke the kiss to look at Castiel, fighting the impulse to pull both of them out of their pyjamas and take them in hand, together.

“I didn’t know if you wanted-” he paused to catch his breath, “this.” Too excited, by far, by a little dry-humping; but it _had_ been almost ten fucking years since they’d met; he thought he deserved to be a _little_ overexcited about rutting against the dick of the guy he’d spent years taking cold showers over.

Castiel rubbed against him again, pointedly, and slow. “I did. I do.”

“You sure?”

Castiel pulled back and looked at him, incredulous. “More than ever before in my life,” he said, smiling around it, a little mocking, and Dean did the only thing he could think of in retaliation, and pinched him.

Cas rolled them over then, and sat on top of him; he bent down to kiss his cheek and shifted his hips, clothed cock dragging slowly against Dean’s. “I’m sure,” he reiterated, and Dean took the opportunity to sit up, forehead colliding briefly with Castiel’s, Cas ending up in his lap. Done with dragging it out (and so hard now that it _ached)_ he fumbled with the waistband of his pyjama pants, chuckling against Castiel’s mouth as he pulled them down far enough to get his cock out. When he repeated it with Cas, he looked down, between them; at Castiel, uncircumcised, cock pretty, flushed and pressed against Dean’s stomach, beside his own. He took a deep, deep breath. Leaned his forehead against Cas’.

“This is important,” Castiel said, quietly, voice breaking the air between them, and Dean tore his eyes from the sight of them – naked, _together –_ to look at his face.

“I guess so.” He felt it, though; some catch of breath in his throat, something that stilled his body, threatened to rock him over. _Important_ was a good word, but _significant_ worked, too. He felt there should be something else to say, to mark the moment; something with gravitas, with weight.

All he could think to do was to catch Castiel’s mouth with his own again, and wrap his hand around them both, together. The noise Castiel made was worth all the well-timed words he could think of in a lifetime.

It wasn’t quite right, the angle off, the pace awkward; Castiel’s breath, sputtering against his cheek, came in short, thick gasps. His lips were parted against the side of Dean’s face, slurred away from kissing, and he worked a hand between them to hold Dean’s wrist still where it was, slowly jacking them together. “It’s – hold on.”

“What?”

He laughed; he took Dean’s wrist and lifted it from between them; brought his hand to his mouth; swiped his tongue across the length of his palm.

“Shit,” Dean whispered softly, and briefly fitted his wet hand to the side of Castiel’s face, pulling him close to kiss him again before working his hand between them to take hold of them once more, palm slicker, moving easier, his own breaths and Cas’ coming short and shallow. The whole room seemed stiflingly warm, strangely close, everything narrowed to the movement of their bodies in the bed, the movement of his hand, the heat of the two of them pressed length-to-length, together. In his lap, Castiel moved on instinct, pushing into his fist, forehead tipped forward and pressed to Dean’s, so close he couldn’t just _count_ his eyelashes, but he could _feel_ them, too.

He breathed through it; something about Castiel always seemed to make the world zero-in, shrink on itself, and Dean had no idea where to go with that, what to do. The noise became obscene, Dean’s palm slick with spit, precome leaking from both of them over his hand.

He looked at Castiel’s face; his eyes open, lips parted, skin flushed. He was making short, soft grunts, little punches of breath that sometimes ended with Dean’s name, and when Dean moved his hand faster, a wave of arousal surging within him just from the look on Castiel’s face, the sensation snuck up on him too quickly; he let go, tipped over the edge, come spilling thick out of him, onto them both, getting them even messier.

He gasped; Castiel looked down between them and shuddered, pushing himself harder into Dean’s hand. He leaned forward and peppered Dean’s face with kisses, muttering, “Oh, Dean, oh,” like he couldn’t believe it.Then he tensed; he made a short, surprised little huff, and then went heavy and languid in his arms as Dean wrung out the last of him, cock twitching in his hand.

 Castiel looked at him, gazed bleary and soft. He muttered, “Wow,” and Dean started laughing; he couldn’t stop.

He lay after with Castiel tucked close against his back, sticky but too exhausted by the _weirdness_ of the day to think about getting up again. He would close his eyes; he’d wake again in the morning, and everything would fine again. He was sure of it. 

He stared at the ceiling for an hour or so, though, before sleep took him; he wondered why he couldn’t hear the wind howling outside.

\---

He rolled over in the light of day, and smiled; Castiel was still tucked against his shoulder, and the warmth from his body seemed to spread all through the bed, the atmosphere dizzy and soft, soupy with heat. He shifted – pushed Cas away slightly so he could breathe – and lay there, hands laced together on his chest.

He wondered if Sam would be back yet; thought about getting breakfast. Maybe a break from working at Bobby’s would be good; maybe all this shit was just his body’s way of telling him he was overtired, or something.

He hummed lightly, and pawed at Castiel’s shoulder.

“Cas?” Castiel didn’t reply; his face was slumped against the bedclothes, nose buried in the sheets where Dean had rolled him, and Dean spared a second to look at him, snorting a soft huff of laughter.

He didn’t know what time it was, but it was time enough to get out of bed, that was for sure; his limbs felt that strange, lax heaviness that came with sex and snoozing, and if he didn’t roll out from beneath the covers soon, he’d stay all day. He prodded Cas again, but again there was no reaction; he remained, slumped against the bedclothes, warming the sheets.

The heat started to feel cloying, and Dean wriggled uncomfortably. “Well, fine,” he muttered, irritated, and swung the sheet back so that he could get out, and winced when the cold air hit his skin. “Jesus.” 

The sheets made a thick, wet sound.

He looked at the bed and realised why it had been so warm; the sheets were crimson, _saturated_ with blood, pooling in the middle, sloppy. Where he’d thrown the sheet back an arc of scarlet had flecked across the wall, and Castiel lay in the middle of it, not moving; the top half of him clear, and clean; the bottom half covered in thick, black-red liquid.

Dean swallowed and wondered why it was only _now_ that he smelt it; sweet copper, warm and sickly, hung in the air like the scent from lit incense. It draped itself over him and he plunged from the bed onto the floor, wet sheets sticking to his legs, tangling with his feet. He shouted, some indescribable, inhuman sound, but no one came running and the sheets coiled wetly, thickly, around his legs. The more he kicked, the more they came, and from where he was on the floor, twisting to get out of their grip, he couldn’t see Cas anymore. He couldn’t see anything.

He groped around on the floor, heart slamming and slamming and slamming, mouth half-open, drawing ragged, desperate breath. Anything would help – he usually slept with a knife under his pillow but Castiel obviously didn’t, and Dean wished he’d had the forethought, the insight, to realise something like this was going to happen eventually; it always did.

He shouted again, the hoarse noise more of a scream; the carpet burned the heels of his hands where he pressed them, trying to pull himself backwards, away. He called for Sam but there was no response, and when he looked up at the ceiling, throat no longer making any definite kind of sound, he saw not the white plaster of their familiar home, but endless arcing waves of sky, and the spider-web tendrils of great oaks above him.


	6. Chapter 6

When he woke again he was shaking, a tremor in his hands he hadn’t felt since Hell. He scrambled upright after moments of trying to breathe, and untangled the bedclothes from his bare feet. The sheets were, of course, clean, and white.

He got to his feet; the bed was empty. His heart threw itself up his throat.

Dean picked his way across the bedroom, now littered with things; he had pulled the mattress half-off the bed, and everything lay in a mess around him. All in all, though, it just looked like a bad dream; like a violent nightmare. He wondered if it really had been.

He leaned on the dresser near the door, breath coming hot and heavy from between his lips; it burned on the way down.

For a moment, he heard nothing. He stood stock-still; waited for something, _anything_ to happen; but the house was quiet as dusk, and everything around him was still.

He made it through the door of Castiel’s bedroom on trembling legs. He half-wandered, half-tumbled down the hallway, and then heard it; the sweet, siren rush of water from the shower. Castiel, humming beneath the spray.

The mouth of the stairs faced the bathroom, and Dean lowered himself gingerly onto the top step; sat there with his head in his hands, listening to the comforting noise of another person in the house, some indication that he wasn’t alone.

But his brother wasn’t here, and he hadn’t answered his phone, and that in itself was terrifying.

When Castiel emerged, Dean was still on the top step; he looked at Dean curiously.

“Are you okay?”

Dean looked up at him and felt something plummet to the pit of his stomach. “No, Cas. Not really.”

Castiel said he was tired, so they went back to his room, laptop on the bed between them, to try and figure out what the fuck was going on. The dreams had been so vivid – if they were dreams at all – that Dean was leaning towards premonition, but the critical eye that Castiel fixed him with suggested that wasn’t possible.

“If you had the powers of foresight, Dean, I would have told you by now,” he paused. “That said, I have no idea what could actually be the cause.”

Dean told him about the ‘dreams’ – visions, whatever – in detail. So far the only thing that connected them was blood, and the forest; Dean had no fucking idea what to make of a combination of the two.

“I think I’m gonna go for a walk,” he said eventually, exhausted by searching for wood-nymphs, for will-o-the-wisps and other forest small-fry. Castiel blinked at him; he had settled beneath the covers a while ago, and his eyes were half-closed, nose pushed against the pillow. Dean tried not to think of him the same way; bloodied, still; as he’d seen him that morning.

“Alright,” he sounded muggy and vague. “I think I need to sleep a little. Wake me when you get back.”

“Okay.”

He left him there, shutting the door behind him, and went downstairs for the first time that day. His legs felt strange, unbalanced; getting to the foot of the stairs was like treading on balloons. 

He wandered around in the kitchen for a little while; made himself a sandwich out of leftovers, wondered how long it’d been since anyone had gone out for groceries. The days seemed to have blurred together in one heavy lump; not moving strangely when he lived them, but looking back they seemed to _crawl._

He sat at the counter; called Sam again, to no avail. His stomach began to writhe and squirm with worry, and something prickled at him, something which had been there for the last few weeks, if he was honest with himself.

This was all too _easy._

It felt wrong.

He called Sam for the fiftieth time, left his empty plate on the counter, and shrugged his jacket on. He was just going to go for a walk; clear his head, maybe pick up another book to read. He toed on his boots, left by the entrance; clasped his keys in one hand after digging for them in his pocket, but to his hesitant surprise, the door simply wasn’t there.

It wasn’t even as if it had vanished; it was like it had never been there, and replacing it was a smooth, blank expanse of white wall, with no doorway, no frame, nothing; sealed.

He thought immediately about calling Lauren; maybe things were just too heavy for him, maybe this was some manifestation of all those years of drinking, _finally_ catching up. His lungs swelled heavy in his throat and his brain seemed to contract, hard; he knew this sensation as well, one he hadn’t known since he was very, very little, and he tried to stave it off, choking on his abortive breaths as he turned to walk carefully back up the stairs, gripping the handrail all the way. He snatched his phone from his pocket and tried Sam again but nothing worked; there was no answer. He shouted Cas’ name, flung the phone at the floor in frustration, burst through Castiel’s bedroom door and found him there, sleeping still, dead to the world.

Dean ran over and took him by the shoulders, shaking him harshly, desperate. “Cas!” calling his name made no difference; Castiel was breathing but his eyes stayed resolutely closed, his body slumped peacefully in the bed, lips parted against the pillows. Dean swore and his hands shook; he couldn’t bring himself to slap him, felt that it would do no good anyway; he ran down the hallway again to the bathroom, filled his cupped hands with water and splashed his own face, but the panic rose, still.

He looked at himself in the mirror and tried to speak, at least to himself – “It’s okay. It’s okay.”

But the floor beneath him was moist and tacky; before his eyes, the ground grew wetter, softer.

Behind the mounted bathroom mirror snaked out tendrils, like ivy. They crawled, fine-web cracks in deep green and base brown, mottled; leaves unfurled, and the mirror cracked; the basin cracked, too, splintering beneath Dean’s hands, the texture beneath its varnish rough and chalklike.

He watched, helpless, as beneath his feet the tiles began to crack and rumple, heaving; roots burst from beneath his feet, swelling like tentacles, vicious and alive; his feet slipped as he gripped the basin. He was leaving dirty tracks on the crumbling white porcelain, muddy boot-lines that skidded back and veered, slipped.

The ground beneath him shifted, alive; this wasn’t like the visions, wasn’t like anything else. No dream, no hell-fantasy; the bathroom was simply disintegrating under his hands, and he slipped to his knees as the sink he was gripping simply turned to dust, sharp and grainy against his skin.

He dug his hands in the loamy earth beneath him – breathed in, then out, and watched as the tiles sunk fully beneath it; as the scenery around him became truly apparent.

He was in a forest; tall trees stretched above his head, an interlacing web of branches. The ground was grey-brown; everything was grey-brown, grey-green, colours muted and inconstant, as if faded with age, or time.

But it was solid; his fingers didn’t pass through it. This wasn’t hell; wasn’t heaven, either, that was for sure. If it was earth, he didn’t know how he’d gotten here.

He felt a sob work its way up his chest and forced himself to breathe past it, trying to remember how to calm down. His ears rang, and he choked on the dry air; breathed in and smelt pine, soil, and was sick with it.

He crouched there on all fours for too long; his arms shook, fingers digging tightly into the ground, dirt shoved under his nails. He was dimly aware of the wetness of the earth soaking through the knees of his jeans; of raindrops, falling on the back of his neck.

Eventually, he managed to push himself back to sit; he was in the forest, still. He was alone.

“Cas?” he called, carefully, but no reply came. He pressed his hands together, embarrassed – he hadn’t had to do this in a long time – and prayed for him. But there was no answer, and the sky above him was dry and stark and empty.

Dean sat back on his heels, staring at his palms.

Then he pulled himself to his feet. Breathed in deep, remembered what was important. No good would come of sitting around; only thing to do, now, was walk.

\---

He walked through the forest for hours, but there seemed to be no roads nearby. Not even a decent log cabin which, even considering the warning _Deliverance_ had given him, would have been a fucking relief.

The forest was mostly featureless; endless expanses of grey trees, silent. As he walked, he surprised himself with how little he felt; no hunger, no tiredness. Just fear, cloying close to his skin, and even then it only registered dimly.

The light in the place never changed; Dean walked (could have been going in circles, for all he fucking knew) for as long as he wanted to, and then sat beneath the hulking trunk of a tree, so tall he could barely see the top, looking up.

He wished for a weapon; he’d picked up a hefty branch on his walk, but he knew that unless he was going to play fetch with a particularly huge dog (and god, he hoped he wasn’t) it wouldn’t do him much good. With his knees drawn up, the branch in his lap, he sighed. He’d been praying to Cas for hours, but there had been nothing; Cas _always_ came when he called, and that, coupled with the strange familiarity of the place, was playing havoc with his ability to process the whole fucking thing.

The house had been there – and then it had been gone.

He’d never had anything like this happen to him, before.

He touched the branch, winding his hands around it. It felt real; but then, everything else had, too. He looked up.

“Cas?” too soft for him to hear in any case. He thought of his brother; wondered if he was alright, if he was at college now, or driving home. If Cas and Sam would find each other, and say to each other, _where’s Dean?_

Knowing his luck, they were both in this godforsaken listless hell, just like him.

Exhaustion overtook him in a bleeding rush; he fell asleep with his head on his forearms.

When he woke, there was a voice calling his name.

He thought, _thank god._

“Sam?” the forest was darker than it had been before, grey dusk deepened to purple night. “Cas?” but the darkness chuckled thinly. He blinked.

Sitting in front of him, cross-legged, was a man.

Or, nearly, at least; his edges were blurred, and Dean had trouble focusing on him; his limbs were long, bulging at the elbows, knees and shoulders; tapering to long, thin points. The ends of his fingers, drumming a beat on his knees, looked razor-sharp.

“Ah. You’re awake,” he said pleasantly, a lilt to his voice that Dean couldn’t quite place; he definitely wasn’t American, and Dean wasn’t all that good at picking out accents anyway, but this guy didn’t sound like he even _had_ an accent at all; the edges of his words were as blurred as his dark body, coming in thick, sensuous whispers. The shape of his head was a large, black oval, and though most of his face was usual – handsome, even, his nose a long slope, lips full – embedded in his head were eight eyes, tiny and perfectly round, black as pitch. The only reason he could see them at all in the gloom was because they glinted when the guy’s head moved, reflecting light so brilliantly that they looked wet.

Dean flattened himself against the tree trunk, hands tightening on the branch. “What are you?” he gritted out, surprise and anger flushing through his body in a warm, terrifying wave. “Did you do this to me?”

The man laughed shrilly; a bird’s laugh. He reached out his long arm and laid his hand on the side of Dean’s face; his fingers prickled like a hundred tiny needles, making Dean’s skin feel flushed and sensitive.

“Wasn’t you that I wanted,” he said, that same slurring lilt making Dean feel like his ears were blocked. “But no one ever does, do they?”

Dean wrenched himself out of the man’s grip – he kicked out, and the man simply shuffled away from him, arms raised. He pulled himself to his feet and he was even taller than his slim shape had suggested; seven, maybe eight feet tall. Beneath the trees he was barely visible; a darker shape in a world of darkness. Dean sat against the tree and looked up at him for a bare second before he scrambled up, using the branch to lever himself from the floor. When he was standing, he weighed the branch in his hands.

“Spare me,” he gritted out, and the man burbled that little laugh again, a short, buzzing sound. “What, you need money for Lasik? Don’t bother,” he paused, deliberating, then said, “Send me _home_.”

The man laughed again, louder, spindly hands holding his sides in a grotesque parody of joy. “Listen first to what I’m going to tell you.”

Dean swung for him immediately with the branch, and the guy stepped backwards deftly, missing his swing.

“You won’t hit me, boy. Listen,” he repeated, and Dean swung for him again, an uppercut this time, branch missing him so entirely that the force of it made Dean stumble forwards. He tumbled slightly – the man caught him carefully by his shoulder with one hand, and righted him again. “Honestly, you’ll only hurt yourself.”

Dean wavered, branch raised. The man looked at him, mouth lifted in a smirk, and waited. Dean stepped away from him – branch still lifted, eyes careful. “Talk.”

“My name is Anansi. My reputation may have preceded me,” the laughter in his voice suggested that his reputation wasn’t positive; Dean had heard his name in passing, but didn’t know the guy was _real._ “Some people refer to me as the Trickster.”

Dean eyed him cautiously. “You’re the genuine article? A real trickster?”

Anansi looked at him boredly and waved a hand. “Trickster _God_. Please.” He shrugged, and the movement of his shoulders was like bones under satin, rolling. “Dean, I’ll be glad to send you back; I _want_ you to go back.”

“What’s the catch?” Dean said quickly, and Anansi laughed again.

“Smart boy,” he pointed at Dean’s left shoulder. “I want _that.”_

“My arm?” Dean spat, lifting a hand to touch it, and Anansi’s eight eyes glittered as they rolled.

“No, fool. Your Grace.”

Dean looked at him and laughed. “You’ve got the wrong guy. I’m no angel,” he said, with a grin, and Anansi moved forward, closing the distance between them in one long stride. The branch fell from Dean’s hands as Anansi’s fingers closed around his neck, holding it tipped back; again, the skin prickled, strange; the thousand tiny needles seemed to sink into his flesh. Anansi lifted him slightly from the ground, and used his other hand to slowly peel Dean’s jacket from his shoulder. He rucked up the sleeve of Dean’s shirt, beneath it, and Dean squirmed in his grip.

“Hands off!” but his words came out with no bravado, laced with fear; Anansi’s hand around his throat was sharp as a blade, and Dean could feel his blood surging beneath the skin, waiting to be released.

Anansi ignored him; he hummed, softly, as he fitted his hand over Dean’s shoulder, where once the print of Castiel’s hand had sat.

Dean _glowed._ Like a tiny, sparkling web, light flourished under the skin; he writhed. “What the fuck are you doing?” kicking his legs in the air like a child – but Anansi held him, coolly, and kept his hand over Dean’s shoulder, the web growing and growing until Dean’s whole shoulder looked like a tiny patchwork nebula of small, blue stars.

“See?” his voice was soft with reverence; Dean couldn’t _stop_ seeing. He felt like something was crawling under his flesh, and as hard as he twisted, Anansi’s grip on him didn’t let up. “Not yours, no. But Grace; yes,” he paused. “I want it.” He clenched his fingers sharply over Dean’s arm; Dean screamed.

“Jesus. Jesus. Okay.” He tried to swallow, but could barely manage it against that hand.

Anansi lowered him slowly to the ground, but held his neck, still. He watched the glowing lights under Dean’s skin and smiled affectionately. “It’s only a small piece. Only a taste,” he leaned close, eyes wide and lidless, and Dean tried to pull his head up further to squirm away, only succeeding in pushing Anansi’s prickly fingers harder against his throat. “But I want you to give it to me. A gift. An offering.”

Dean reared back and spat in one of his eyes. Anansi only gripped him tighter.  “How the fuck can I fucking _give it to you?_ You want me to cut it out?”

Anansi peered at him. “Him, I can take almost all of it from, but you…” he paused. “It was a gift. I need you to let him give it to _me_.”

“S’not mine to gift,” Dean said, and looked at him. “Where is he? Cas? Where’s my brother?”

Anansi sighed, and slowly peeled his long fingers from around Dean’s neck; the skin stung where they’d been. Dean stepped back as quickly as he could; his neck felt wet where he touched it, and he realised that Anansi’s prickly skin had actually _punctured_ him. He hissed.

Anansi looked at him, head tilted. “It wasn’t only Leviathan he took on board, you know,” he waved a hand, grimacing. “Those filthy, _boring_ things,” he sniffed. Dean stared at him.

“Leviathan? What the fuck are you taking about? What’s a leviathan?”

Anansi’s smile came slow, and pitying. He stepped close, and caught the back of Dean’s neck so he couldn’t step away. He laid a soft, sucking kiss to Dean’s forehead; Dean breathed in so sharply that his lungs jolted in his chest.

“Dean, where do you think you’ve _been_ all this time?” said Anansi, the touch of his lips lingering, sharp. 

And Dean knew.

He remembered everything. Sam falling into the pit, jumping; Dean, bruised and battered on that field. His brother, soulless, Castiel unreachable, Castiel in a ring of fire. Feeling hurt and miserable and betrayed, every single fucking day. The insurmountable coldness in Castiel’s eyes.

Then Cas, dead, Sam a mess; _Dean_ more of a mess than usual, dragging himself through each day. Cas coming back and not even knowing his name; leviathan.

Bobby, his only father that ever gave a damn, shot and slipped away on a fucking hospital bed.

Cas in white scrubs, frustratingly quiet. Numb.

Leaving his brother behind.

The grey, echoing darkness of Purgatory.

Calling Cas’ name, to no answer.

Stumbling through the trees, called on by some invisible voice; finding a web, and pushing through it with ease.

After that, waking at his kitchen counter. In his house. With his family.

He reeled back, staggering, and stared at Anansi’s sympathetic smile. “I have no problem with _you,_ boy. You’ve done good things,” he shook his head. “You were pulled into this without my say-so.”

Dean stared. “It wasn’t-” he opened his mouth, then closed it again. “It wasn’t _real?”_ The house, his brother, _Cas –_ “Cas wasn’t real? He wasn’t – we didn’t really -? Sam’s not here?”

Anansi laid his hands on Dean’s shoulders. “Your friend had no right to imprison me,” he said, levelly, as the sea is level before the storm truly hits. “I am older than him, than his God; I am wiser,” he shook his head. Dean was still cycling through everything in his brain, picking the pieces, remembering everything he’d said, everything that had happened, that now meant _nothing._ God, he’d been _sober._ “He had no right to take me, cage me up, _use me._ I was not his to _use._ I am not _anyone’s plaything,”_ Anansi’s anger pressed out of his words, fattened them. “I have caged him. It’s fair. I am using his power, like he used mine.”

“He didn’t-” but he’d been free of this for so long, this question; he couldn’t say _Cas didn’t mean it._

He _had._

“I want his grace,” said Anansi, “I have pulled out the most of it; the most of him. He will not die, if he gives me these last dregs. If you give me yours,” he said emphatically, “An eye for an eye is older than _his_ book, Dean. This is tit for tat. Simple. I am _merciful,_ doing this _.”_

Dean, broken in _half,_ stared at him dumbly, words not coming.

“I’ll send you back there. The dream is fuller with you in it. If you stay with him, it won’t break again.”

“That’s what happened? It broke?” he remembered the bathroom crumbling beneath his hands.

“I have taken almost all of his grace. Without you near him, your piece of it, it simply…collapsed.” Anansi shrugged, and Dean felt it in the hands on his shoulders. Up close, he could see that Anansi’s skin was covered in tiny barbs. “That’s why you ended up there. You fell into my web. He called to you – to that piece of himself, in you.”

“He wouldn’t wake up,” Dean said, trying to ignore everything else clawing at him. Anansi shot him another pitying glance, and touched his arm.

\---

In front of him, Castiel lay sleeping. Dean looked around the clean, white bedroom and remembered why it unnerved him so much; the image of Castiel; his white scrubs, the white sheets. Was he even _sane?_

“Cas?” he said, carefully, and Castiel blinked his eyes awake. Fixed Dean with a soft, sloppy smile.

“Hello, Dean. Did the walk help? Are you alright?”

“Not really,” he admitted, and stepped closer to the bed. “Cas, I – we’re in trouble.”

It was so _normal_ being there. Warm. Like home. Dean had trouble believing that what Anansi had told him wasn’t the lie; this was the place they’d first been together. The place he’d spent five fucking years – god knew how long it was in real-time - getting himself to some approximation of _okay._

“What is it?” Castiel still sounded tired, lazy; Dean came over to him.

“You know how sometimes stuff seems too good to be true?”

Castiel looked at him blankly, features growing more fearful by the second. Dean drew breath.

“You ever think this was too easy?” he said quietly, and Castiel shook his head.

“Dean. Don’t.”

“Cas, this isn’t -”

“Dean,” he sounded so hollow. “Don’t.”

He reached out, and touched Dean’s hand. Dean pulled it back. “You knew?” Castiel opened his mouth, and Dean cut him off. “No, you – Cas, you _knew?”_

“I suspected! I didn’t know!” Dean got off the bed and stepped back – Castiel threw back the bedclothes and followed. “I wasn’t sure, Dean, there was no way to know, no _definite_ way, I didn’t want to scare you- you were doing so _well,_ ” he closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I suppose I was just _hoping.”_ He raised his hands, placatory, but Dean kept stepping backwards.

Dean gaped at him. “You let me – you let me think I was crazy?”

Castiel opened his mouth; shook his head. “No! I didn’t – things were so good, Dean, I just – didn’t want it to have to end. _”_

Dean closed his eyes. Dropped his head. He clenched his fists, and unclenched them. “Cas,” he said, and breathed out slowly. There were bigger things to think about than this; there was getting out, getting home to Sammy. Yelling and pissing and moaning wouldn’t do any fucking good for any of them. Later, later, later. “Look.”

He shrugged the jacket from his shoulders again; underneath, his sleeve was still rolled up, mostly. He pulled it as high as it would go, dropping the jacket. He walked closer to Castiel. “Did you know that was there?” he said quietly, and Castiel stared at his shoulder.

“No,” he said, reverent, and reached out a hand. Dean’s shoulder heated; it never had before, when Cas touched him, but maybe Anansi had brought it to the surface; maybe it was just because he knew it was there. “Is that _me?”_

“I think so.” Dean slid his sleeve back down. The grace glowed through his sleeve.

“It must have been left when I rebuilt you. When I left my mark on you,” his voice was strange and tight. “I didn’t know that could happen.”

“Well, that’s why we’re here. Some dude – some fucking _trickster god_ wants me to convince you to _gift_ it to him as revenge, or something.” He pulled his lip in with his teeth. “He’s already got almost all of it, Cas. You’re… keeping this thing solid. The house. Your grace is, anyway.”

“The bedroom is all that’s left?”

“I think so.”

Castiel’s face tightened. “The spider; that’s who spoke to you?”

Dean nodded. “I guess,” he paused. “We’re gonna kick his ass, right?”

Castiel looked at him, and smiled slowly. He reached for Dean’s face, but Dean flinched away; he let the hand drop, face carefully blank. “Sorry,” he paused, looking carefully at Dean, features etched in guilt. “He’s more powerful than me, Dean. There’s – I don’t remember everything before this …illusion, and I have barely any of my grace. He was right. I shouldn’t have done what I did. If this is part of my penance, then so be it. I’ll make amends.”

Dean remembered him before the apocalypse, on only scraps of his grace; furious and shredded and lonely. Drunken. Just that little too much like Dean. “Cas.”

“I really don’t think there’s any other option.”

“We usually find one,” Dean muttered softly, and Castiel shook his head.

“ _You_ do. Lately, my attempts have gone awry.”

It was so much different, now, knowing all that had gone between them. All the anguish, all the grief, all the terrible, desperate, adoration; the _hatred._ Dean had hated him, and loved him despite it, and hated him all the more.

He didn’t know if it sullied everything they had here.

“It just doesn’t feel right,” he said, voice on the edge of pleading, and Castiel laughed.

“Honestly, Dean, it might make me feel better. This… place is all I’ve wanted for a while, now. But you can’t have everything. Not ever,” he shrugged. “Perhaps it was inevitable. At least this way it is mostly my choice.”

“You’re not _choosing_ to-”

“I am _choosing_ to let him settle my debt with him,” he said, and shook his head. “I am _choosing_ to ask you to let me do this,” he paused. “Will you?”

“Will I-?”

Castiel went to his bedside table, slid the first drawer open, and pulled out a familiar long, silver blade. He closed the drawer, came back over, and pressed it into Dean’s hand, curling his fingers around it. “He left this for me for a reason.” He pulled down the collar of his shirt, so Dean could see the network of bright blue veins, the stars, winking in and out under his breastbone, glowing faintly – fainter than Dean’s arm – beneath the layer of his skin. “Will you help me give this away?” he paused. “It won’t be enjoyable.”

Dean looked at him for a moment and thought of all the reasons not to trust him; not to help. “What _is_?” he said, and laughed softly at Castiel’s surprise, swallowing every little acid, poisonous prick of betrayal that was building at the base of his spine. Cas was his friend first; everything else would come after. “What do you need?”

\---

They sat opposite each other on the carpet, legs crossed.

Castiel held out his hand for Dean’s, palm flat.

“Are you sure you’ll do this?” he said, “I can’t lie to you Dean; I’m not sure what will happen, and it will be painful.”

Dean shrugged. “Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”

Castiel grimaced in response, but said nothing. Gave a short, careful nod.

Dean put his hand, palm up, in Cas’; let him grasp his wrist. There was a short, warm moment when all Dean could feel was Castiel’s hand wrapped around his, and then he said, “This will hurt.”

He sunk Cas blade into Dean’s arm; the point of the blade dug into his wrist, under all the layers of skin, and then Castiel angled it down further, so that a deep, thick cut was there, blood welling around the edges of the blade. Dean hissed and squirmed, but Castiel held his hand still, tightly.

“Sorry,” he said, and genuinely sounded it. “I’m sorry. It won’t last long.” He withdrew the blade – Dean made another anguished noise – then quickly dug it into his own palm, much less carefully than he had done to Dean. He fitted his dripping palm over the wound, smearing blood all over the flat underside of Dean’s wrist.

The salt on Castiel’s hand, the rasp of his skin, his sticky blood, made the cut hurt worse; Dean trembled and tried to hold himself still. “Is that- what’re you doing?” he gritted out.

Castiel, staring at his arm, mumbled, “Calling.”

And so, apparently, he was; just as the bluish lights, like veins, had risen to the surface when Anansi called, so now they rose again, but the sensation was sharper; Castiel’s grace brightened, glowing like halogen under his skin, and started to race down his arm.

At first, he was fascinated; then he cried out. “Jesus fucking _Christ,_ Cas, _fuck.”_ The Grace didn’t just hurt, it _burned,_ and as it travelled down his veins the skin of his arm seemed to contract and swell, turning red. The grace drew blue tracks on his skin like a roadmap, draining out of his flesh and into Castiel’s waiting palm. There was more of it than he’d thought, or maybe it was just the pain making him think so; the transferral wracked his whole body with burning, made him tremble. Even just this small part of Castiel was powerful, _powerful_ magic, and he was gasping with the way it jerked through his body, making the veins in his arm seem to swell.

His muscles bunched, in spasm; Castiel’s fingers gripped him so tightly that he thought his wrist might snap. As the grace wound out of him, travelling down his veins, his skin glowed, lit from beneath; the light got brighter and brighter, more and more painful, until his arm was shaking with the effort of staying connected to Cas; his skin flushed with prickly heat as the tight, constricting sensation in his arm crested; a wave of pain wracked him as the vessels in his arm burst, sending rivulets of hot blood cascading over his wrists, his shoulder, his forearm, dripping sticky over his skin, pooling at his elbow and dribbling thickly onto the floor. Dean cried out louder, shocked by the sensation of his blood being released from him, the blue light still shining in his arm. He shook; Castiel gripped him tighter, mumbling apologies, but Dean could no longer hear them over the ringing in his ears.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it ended; Dean felt the grace leave him in a thick, powerful wave, and when he looked down his arm was messy with red-black trails, dripping, but it wasn’t glowing anymore. Slowly, he lifted his eyes to Castiel’s. Both of them were breathing hard. 

When it was done, Castiel moved his hand. The sticky blood had congealed, making Dean hiss through his teeth as the seal it made was ripped away, skin clinging. There was no cut left behind; just a mess of red.

Dean watched the grace spiral back up Castiel’s arm, around his shoulder, and filter around his collarbone under his shirt, joining with the cluster around his ribs.

Castiel breathed in, once, deeper than Dean thought anyone should be able; and then exhaled, and sat straight where he sat.

“Are you alright?”

“I think so,” Dean blinked, vision blurring at the edges. He felt woozy, but okay. His arm stung.

“I didn’t know that would happen,” Cas said quietly, nodding at his arm, and Dean looked down.

The trails the blood had left looked like roots; like webs. Castiel reached out and touched his arm again and Dean no longer felt like he should be bleeding to death, which was a plus. He looked down at it, dully; it was still coated with a thin orange-red wash of blood, congealing. “Okay,” he shrugged. It could have been worse. “Okay.”

Castiel nodded at him, seeming to waver. The sword lay dormant in his hands, dirty with Dean’s blood, and Dean eyed it before speaking.

“You’re sure?”

Castiel just looked at him, briefly, and nodded. Once. Then he handed the blade wordlessly to Dean, tugged his shirt over his head, and gestured for it back. Dean hesitated, turning the blade in his palm.

“This definitely isn’t real?” he said, quietly, and Castiel shrugged.

“We should have known,” he said, a little too earnest for Dean’s taste. “When is anything ever like _this_ for us?”

He handed the blade over without another word. Castiel took several deep breaths – hesitated, clutching the sword in his fist.

He drew it close to himself; it happened quickly. One swift, sharp jab, far less hesitant than he’d been with Dean, and he pressed the tip of the steel into his chest, digging it deep. Dean watched, horrorstruck, as Castiel pushed it deeper; as the veins in Castiel’s chest turned bright, bright blue and swelled and burst, blood running in streams down his skin, to pool at his belly.

As he pushed down, the world around them started to shift and melt; Castiel, eyes squeezed tightly shut, fumbled his hand forward and caught Dean’s arm, gripping so hard that Dean thought _he_ might burst, just like the veins running rivers down Castiel’s chest.

The room disintegrated, slowly; the bed cracked in half, folded in on itself; the floorboards shifted and softened and rotted away, leaving them in the middle of the forest floor, gripping each other. In a long, effervescent trail, Castiel’s grace curled out of his chest and into the fist that still clutched his knife, turning his skin a bright, blistering blue.

Dean shouted his name; Castiel shook his head, quickly. He dropped the knife – the tip skimmed down his chest, breaking the skin before it landed in his lap – and he held his clenched fist, bulging with that blue light, out to the side.

“Take it. It’s yours,” he gritted out, teeth clenched. Dean saw only the wrap of Anansi’s long fingers around Castiel’s wrist, heard his high laugh, and then neither saw, nor felt, anything else for a long time.


	7. Chapter 7

 

After waking on the forest floor, bruised and bloody, there was little to do other than walk. Dean was back in the clothes he’d arrived in; a shirt, still stained with Dick Roman’s blood; a jacket, and pants. Castiel, lying beside him on the leaf-strewn floor, was back in those sickening hospital scrubs, bloodied and dirtied at the knees and ankles.

Castiel rose first, waking Dean by gently shaking his shoulder. He looked smaller somehow – like he weighed less without the grace inside him. He said nothing, and Dean refused his hand when it was offered to pull him up.

They passed the first day in silence, walking side-by-side in the grey light of Purgatory. Dean found himself _homesick_ for the first few hours, and had to remind himself that the _home_ he was thinking of had never been real in the first place. Still, he remembered it vividly; the smell of freshly laundered linen, the way the couch had sagged beneath their combined weight. Sam, running in the mornings, his hair a mess before he took a shower. Kissing; laughing; cooking dinner. Reading on the front porch like it was the first fucking morning of his life, utterly at peace. His hands clenched at his sides.

They settled down to sleep when Castiel stumbled, blinking hard. Dean forgot that it would be his first night of rest, first night of needing it, _ever;_ but part of him couldn’t bring himself to care, and vile though he felt to think it, he was angry.

Angry at himself for not realising, sure, but mostly angry with Cas for giving up so easily, for letting it go on longer than it needed to. The thought occurred to him that the dream had been Cas’ ultimate fantasy; Sam, and Dean, and a house. Dean working. Dean _happy._ It nagged at him, the idea; he wanted to ask Cas about it, but at the same time the less he knew, the better.

They leaned against the trunk of a large tree, side by side, not touching. Castiel fell asleep with an ease that Dean himself hadn’t felt – not in reality, anyway – in years, and Dean envied him it, and detested him for it, and was endeared to him, all at once.

He didn’t fall asleep himself; he tried, but he was thinking too loud for it to take.

The next day they didn’t say much, either. Castiel – knowledgeable about purgatory for reasons Dean didn’t really want to consider – led the way through the trees, and the silence between them was sharp, and constant. They slept under a canopy of branches, ate nothing, for they had no need; in that endless, grey place there seemed to be no hunger, no need for any bodily function but sleep. Dean wondered if he even needed to _breathe_.

Castiel said there was a portal somewhere in purgatory – a door between this world and earth.

“Now that we’re both human, and graceless, we should be able to pass through,” he said mildly, as he pulled branches back and waited for Dean to catch up. He walked too fast, for someone who looked so _sick;_ but it wasn’t really fooling Dean, for he was out of breath more often than not, and his shoes were soaked, his footsteps painful, gait softened by the mud.“I’m not sure what might have happened if you passed through with only the shred of myself in you, but I would have been eviscerated, so,” he paused, and did a strange, one-shouldered shrug. Dean couldn’t remember if he’d learned it before coming here, or after. “Perhaps it’s for the best.”

It was infuriating, hearing him talk; as if it didn’t matter, as if it didn’t make a difference. They hadn’t touched since leaving that dream-place, and it wasn’t for lack of trying; Cas reached out to him, several times, but Dean couldn’t accept the weight of his hand. Maybe he was afraid it would hurt, burn, like the grace had; more likely, though, he just didn’t want to be held. Least of all by Cas.

“Yeah. Maybe,” was all he could muster, and though Castiel looked more lost than ever at his words, Dean said nothing to reassure him; he didn’t have the strength for it.

On their third night, Dean made a fire. Cas came to sit next to him, but kept a respectful distance; cautious, like Dean would turn around and snap at him.

“What’re you gonna do when you get out?” Dean asked him, deliberately callous; it had the desired effect, because Castiel flinched, as if struck.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly, and looked at his hands. He did that a lot, now. “I’ll go with you, I suppose,” but his voice had been pared down to the barest mumble, and he didn’t look at Dean when he said it.

“Will you?” he parried back, poking at the dying fire with a branch he’d found; he could feel Castiel’s gaze on the side of his face.

“Yes,” Castiel sounded bewildered, and Dean hated himself for how _satisfied_ it made him feel. “Dean-”

“Cas, why was that world like it was?” he ventured, and Castiel fell silent for a moment. After a lengthy pause, he spoke again.

“It was what I wanted.”

Dean looked at him, and frowned. He couldn’t think of how to reply; nothing that wouldn’t land them exhausted and frustrated. They had to go on, go _home;_ all he wanted was to see his brother again. That was it.

He looked at Cas, caught the loss in his expression, and sighed as he turned away.

\---

He didn’t mean to bring it up again, but Cas just kept lookingat him as they walked, and it twisted him up inside. He missed his bed, his things; the tiny details they’d acquired over five fucking years in a dreamworld. He missed feeling like he had a family; but he was trying not to dwell on it. Remembering what had happened to Bobby, he was trying not to think at all.

The whole day, he kept silent. They travelled a good distance; there seemed to be nothing out here, no creatures, not even insects; the walks were long, and quiet, and full of the kind of tension Dean wanted to rip to pieces just so that it would _end._

They camped again that night and Castiel sat on the opposite side of the fire, the flames lighting his face from beneath and reminding Dean of that godforsaken circle, so long ago.

“Dean, what happened in there,” he began, and Dean turned away from him, but there was nowhere to go; they were stuck together, isolated, and much as he was uncomfortable, Dean wasn’t going to leave him. He reluctantly met Castiel’s gaze. “What happened – it wasn’t a lie.”

Dean shook his head. “Cas, it’s _over.”_

“I don’t want it to be.”

Dean felt himself physically recoil. “It wasn’t _real,”_ he said, hoarse, and Castiel frowned.

“The house wasn’t,” his voice was distant. “I was. You were.”

Across the flames, Cas looked hollow. “It was good,” Perfect, even. Better than he could have imagined; Castiel’s heartbroken frown didn’t lessen. “Can’t we just leave it there? We can’t – we can’t have that. Not in the real world.”

Castiel gathered his knees to his chest and managed to look even smaller, swamped by his filthy trenchcoat, perhaps the only thing Dean had actually _missed_ when they were in there. “Why not?” he asked, and Dean bent his head. Buried a hand in the dirt.

“’Cause stuff like that doesn’t happen to us, Cas.”

\---

“We should reach the portal after another two day’s walking.”

Dean nodded dumbly. “Great. I can’t wait.” But his words meant nothing; with nothing to distract them, no need to eat, nothing but tiredness and this strange _grief,_ there was only him and Castiel, and the words unsaid between them.

Castiel spoke first, always. “It was us,” he said quietly, “I can’t pretend it wasn’t.”

Dean ignored him when he stood, and came to sit beside him. He let Castiel take his hand; let him rub circles on it with his thumb, the gesture too familiar and too foreign, at once.

“Don’t.”

“Can we talk about it?”

Dean looked at their hands, together. “It was what it was,” he said, quietly. “It was good, but it’s over now.”

“Why?”

“Because we don’t really have a house together, Cas. Because I’m still an alcoholic, and you’re not an angel anymore, and when we stopped the apocalypse my brother had to _die_ for it. Because you betrayed me, and I didn’t listen to you, and this past year I’ve been so fucking lost, missing you,” he drew breath and found it profoundly difficult; Castiel’s thumb, a constant, kept rubbing circles on his skin. “And I can’t do it again. Not any of it. I don’t want to. The me in there must have been stronger, Cas, because this – this is too _much_.”

“You did it, once. Doesn’t that mean something?”

Dean laughed. “Did _what?”_

“You were happy. We both were.”

Dean pulled his hand away. “Yeah, in some psycho spider’s _fantasy world,”_ he spat, and swallowed, hard. “I just wanna go home.”

Castiel looked at him; desolate, disappointed. Dean ignored him as best he could; but when Cas fell asleep beside him, head tilted down, chin resting uncomfortably on his chest, Dean rearranged him so he lay against his side, heat bleeding through from one body to the other.

He closed his eyes, but couldn’t sleep.

The unnerving thing was remembering every part of it. The years after the dream apocalypse, and the years after the real one. Being happy, and being so fucking _miserable_ he could _scream._

In the dream world he’d quit after the apocalypse. Tried to do it off his own back, and succeeded, and failed, and failed, and failed. Eventually Sam set him up to meet Lauren, and he _hated_ it. Hated talking to her, hated going to meetings, hated all those faces like his. Hated the way his brother looked at him, so simperingly proud.

He’d got better, then relapsed, then got better again. He’d thrown bottles, he’d screamed, he’d passed out and thrown up and _cried_ in his brother’s arms. He’d said things to his brother and to Cas that he regretted, even though it hadn’t really been Sam.

But somewhere along that road it had started _working._ He’d started feeling proud, as well _._ Of who he was, of what his mom might think, to see him like that. Three years, something to be _proud of,_ and Sam had presented him with the medallion, to remind him of it.

He dug in his pockets, then, and found it; the remaining relic of their time in the dream. The thick circle of metal; _To thine own self be true._

But Dean didn’t know who his self even _was;_ if that guy who did it, that guy who started getting better, was still _him._ If that guy – who loved Cas, who laughed against his mouth, giddy with joy – was a guy he could be, again.

He clutched the metal disk in his hands, heating it with his skin. He held it so tight that when morning came and he slipped it back into his pocket, the raised letters were pressed, light, into the flesh of his palms.

\---

In the morning he woke Cas, and they started walking again. They found a river, at one point; nothing impressive. A long, muddy, sinuous line, so dark with filth that it was barely a different colour to the dirt it ran alongside.

Cas, without a word, veered away from the path they were following, and sat beside the river. He looked out onto it, and Dean couldn’t help but be reminded of Cas staggering into another body of water, caked in black, unsteady. He stood behind Castiel, silent.

“Perhaps we should part ways, when we reach the surface.”

Dean stared at the back of his head as if he’d grown another. “What?”

Castiel turned around and looked at him over his shoulder, then turned towards the river again. “I’ve loved you for such a long time,” he said softly, “And when I get to the surface, I’ll feel my humanity more… acutely,” his voice was low, and measured. Dean tried to swallow around whatever was crawling up his throat. “Perhaps it would be best if we …separated.”

Dean said, “No,” before he could register that his mouth was making sound. Castiel turned, again, to look at him. “Cas, don’t _leave me,_ I’m – please.”

“I don’t know what you want from me,” Castiel said gently, looking not angry, but earnest. Somehow that made it worse. “You don’t want me to leave, but you don’t want to be my friend. You know what I did, but you keep me beside you.” He shook his head. “You’re right, Dean. Things can’t be like they were.”

Dean walked over to sit beside him. The ground shifted beneath him; his boots touched the filthy water, just barely. “Honestly, Cas, I don’t know what I want either. Everything’s – everything’s all fucking _jumbled_ in my head. I don’t know what I’ve done and what I haven’t. I mean, I do, but-” he dug in his pocket, and pulled out the medallion. “See? It’s real,” in the bare second before his fingers closed around it, he’d been terrified he’d imagined it. “But I don’t – I don’t know what that _means.”_

Castiel reached for it, like he had in the dream world, sitting on the hood of Dean’s car; but instead of taking it from him, he closed his fingers around the medallion; around Dean’s own hand.

“Maybe it means what it meant when you got it,” he said. “Maybe it means you can keep going on.”

The words came out without his consent. “I don’t want to go topside if you’re not there with me.”

“Then I’ll be with you,” Castiel said immediately, as if it was obvious. The wash of relief that Dean felt surprised him.

“Even if I don’t know what I want?”

“Even then.” He smiled, like it was a joke.

\---

That night, they settled down again; one more day, by Cas’ estimates, and they’d reach the portal, and then the earth beyond it. Dean didn’t know if he was relieved, or _terrified._

They sat side-by-side at the foot of a tree, knees touching.

“Do you think I can do it?”

Castiel looked at him. “Dean, I think you can do all number of things you never even _considered_ being able to do.”

Dean choked a laugh, derisive. “You’re like my own personal Big Bird, you know that? So fucking supportive.”

“Not always.”

“No, not always,” he admitted, but it didn’t dull the sentiment. He pulled the medallion from his pocket again, and turned it over in his hand. “You think _we_ can do it?”

“Maybe not as seamlessly.”

“Maybe not at all.”

Castiel hummed gently, and laid a hand on his wrist. He leaned over, close to Dean’s face, and let Dean kiss him first. “I’m prepared to risk it.”

Dean pulled away and looked at him, soft. “You meant it?” he dreaded the answer, even though he already knew it. Castiel smiled back at him.

“That I loved you? I thought you knew.”

“No. No, I didn’t.”

“Well, now you do,” his voice grew cautious. “Is that alright?”

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s – it’s good.” Dean swallowed, and pushed his face against Cas’ neck, inhaling; felt Cas wrap his arms around his middle. “It’s good.”

He was so easily lost, called into Castiel’s arms again, called to curl with him in peace, even in a place like this.

He hated what had happened to him; all that he’d had, all he’d been shown, and how it had been taken away. He didn’t know if it was _right_ that Castiel’s perfect world featured all three of them, living together, domestic as hell. He didn’t know if it was right that Cas was human, now.

He hooked an arm around Cas’ waist and pulled him in closer; fell asleep there, in his arms, and felt something close to the rest he’d gotten in that wonderful, horrible dream.

\---

The next day, they reached the portal; heavy and anxious and desperate to get _home._ Sam waited on the other side; Dean missed his brother more with every breath, not knowing how long it had been since they’d left earth behind.

The portal was a thin slice of shimmering air; Dean would have dismissed it if Cas hadn’t pointed it out. It was at the top of a hill, grey and dotted with tiny, malnourished trees.

They’d woken tangled together, Dean holding on so tight he was embarrassed when they separated. They put out their fire; they walked, together, the last few miles to the way out.

Standing in front of the portal, Dean thought of everything that had happened down here; thought of how many years might have passed, in his absence; of what might have changed. Were the Leviathan gone? Was the _world_ still in place? What about Sam?

Despite being so close with him the night before, Dean still looked at Cas with apprehension, with fear. He didn’t know if there was enough still between them to sustain them; if the dream had made them think there was more of a chance for them to be happy than there really was. He didn’t know if Cas’ betrayal, if his own negligence, would come back to hang them, in the end.

Through the portal, wavering and blurred, he could see the world; a road. The earth, bright and solid.

Dean walked through first; took a deep breath and plunged through that invisible barrier, feeling nothing but the strange sensation of sluicing through water, before he reached the other side. He waited beyond the barrier, looking back, for one terrifying millisecond, where Cas did not follow after.

But then he came through; filthy trenchcoat, ragged hospital scrubs and all.

He looked at Dean, anxiety clear on his face. Beyond them, the road stretched out; it was idyllic, almost; on either side of the road, rows and rows of corn stood, waving; yellow, blinding colour after so much grey. The sky above was such a bright, acid blue that he thought, looking up, he might drown in it.

For a moment the two of them stood as if in yet another world, rather than a familiar one. The earth was an assault, a clamour of light, of sun. There wasn’t another person to be seen for miles; just the corn, just the road, just the grass lining the sides of the highway.

He looked at Cas in the same moment that Cas turned, again, to him.

Dean frowned at the expression on his face; at the strange, fumbling insecurity in his own breast.

He took a deep breath of real air, and still found it hard for his lungs to settle.

Searching for an anchor, for ballast, Dean reached between them, fumbling, and caught Castiel’s hand with his own.

“Okay,” he said quietly, and Castiel waited for his next word with his careful, considering stare. “I guess we go home.”

Castiel nodded. He interlaced their fingers, gesture instinctive, familiar, a comfort.

He squeezed Dean’s hand in his own; together, they started walking.

**End**


	8. Epilogue

Six months down the line, the world was a much less familiar place.

But the earth was still a low, flat disk for Dean to drive upon; his car was warm, its leather seats still attuned to his shape, the ground outside largely unchanged.

Together, he and Castiel had walked as far as they could. Away from purgatory, hunger came on them swiftly, and without money or a means to get hold of any, they had simply walked, and suffered.

Castiel was more unused to the lack than Dean; unlike Dean, he hadn’t dealt with hunger as a child, hadn’t given his share for the sake of his younger sibling, and so he shook and retched by the roadside as Dean coped with his own dizzy, dehydrated fever. It was as if everything they went easily without in purgatory came back with slamming force, and they were like starved men before they could even fully realise it, weak with desperation almost the moment their feet touched earth.

They found a gas station nearby, and bartered (just barely) for a little food, a drink from the faucet, directions north. They walked on.

Much like Dean’s life before they went down below, the world was a blur of truckstops and motels. Dean hustled pool, Cas kept his distance, his presence unnerving to potential marks. They made enough money for a room together, and slept in separate beds, curled to face each other, neither saying a word.

Talk came easier, after a while.

He told Cas about the things he’d seen in there; how he had been Cas. Killed his brothers, killed that sweet man in heaven, broken everything. Perched on the edge of a motel bed, Cas watched him as he talked.

“Was that what you wanted?” he asked him, voice stripped bare, and Cas looked hideously guilty as he nodded. “You wanted the house, the job, the peace?”

“I also wanted _you_ ,” Cas replied, and Dean’s heart wrenched in his chest.

“Me and you?”

“You, _happy.”_ He’s said it before, but it still feels like a blow.

Dean had nothing to say to that, words an unreality. Everything seemed a fucking unreality, everything blurred and inconstant. He had dreams of the light in that house, how everything was always so mysteriously clean; of sitting out on the porch in the morning light, soft paged book between his hands, sun bobbing slow in the heavens.

They went to bed again, rose again, walked through another dusty day. In contrast to the weary autumn of the world below, the surface was painfully bright; summer was acrid and burst over his eyelids every morning, seared his flesh, made his nerves sing. Cas sweated at his side and soon shucked his trenchcoat, holding it over his arm.

Another motel, another day, Cas said, “I’m so sorry,” like the fucking thing really _was_ his fault, and Dean shook his head.

Cas was perched on the end of one of the beds, hands clasped, eyes downcast. The room was just another in a string of unremarkable rooms, this one patterned in blue, light coming through the blinds soft and ethereal, like winter.

“Don’t be,” he muttered, and meant it. He joined Cas on the bed and pushed his hands into Cas’ hair, tilting their heads together. Close, breathing each other’s breaths, he could only stare. He didn’t say what he was thinking – didn’t wonder if it would be the same, if it meant the same, if it could be _anything_ considering all that had gone between them. He just kissed Castiel’s mouth, finding it warm and familiar under his, sweet safety; one thing, unchanged.

Cas pulled away and looked heartbroken, brows furrowed.

“Did you mean it?” Dean asked him again, unable to resist and Cas frowned.

Cas nodde so quickly that it almost scared him. “Yes. Everything.”

Dean didn’t know what to make of that so he kissed him again, pulling Cas to him with a sweep of his hands, finding him solid and real, just as he always was.

\---

He twirled the coin in his hand out on the road, waiting for a bus that would take them closer to Sam. Cas leaned over and looked at it.

“You think I can do it?” Dean said, sans context, but Cas seemed to understand.

“I know you can, if you want to.” A pause. “Do you want to?”

“I don’t know.”

Cas just nodded, never pressing, and found Dean’s wrist with his hand, wrapping slim fingers around it.

Dean looked out at the highway – endless long lines, endless russet, endless gold. He wondered what it would be like, _really_ , to make positive choices.

The coin was warm, in his hand; Cas’ fingers were warm on his flesh. Both were an anchor, both _meant_ something, and finding his way to Sam would mean something, too.

He stared out at the horizon for a long time, bones heavy, heart _aching._

Neither the coin, nor Cas’ touch, ever cool.

\---

It takes five more motels, five more tentative kisses, for Cas to touch him with intent.

Dean started it; Cas would not reach out without his permission, would not close a hand around him unless Dean said it was alright; but when Dean started Cas surged against him with a grace and an eagerness unparalleled, hands like brands on his flesh.

It was nothing like it was below, and yet exactly like it; Dean crowded him up against the bedframe, dipped his mouth to Cas’, Cas’ head pushing back against the wall.

They peeled layers from each other, glad to get out of the heat, and somehow it seemed like something _huge;_ Dean did not imagine himself as part of some romance, some dénouement, some _ending;_ but there they were in bed together and it was like he’d never been touched before.

He planned it – bought condoms and lube during the day, stashed them optimistically near the motel bed, and reached for them as Cas looked up at him in wonder.

He felt wanted, when he was with Cas. Wanted, valued, almost right. He didn’t know if it was the memory in contrast; the white sheets of their home together, juxtaposed with these in scratchy green; the summer outside, bright though it’s edging to evening, as opposed to the autumn’s cold.

He sat in Cas’ lap and asked for his fingers; first one, then two, pushing inside him, careful. Cas watched him and occasionally said his name, but Dean was in yet another world; he wrapped his arms around Cas’ neck and pushed down onto his hand, two fingers turning to three, everything almost too much. When he was finally seated, Cas pressed fully inside him, he had no words, no way to speak.

He buried his face in Cas’ shoulder, pulled them as close together as they could be, moved as Cas moved, moaning desperately against his neck. Cas’ mouth was at his ear, _DeanDeanDean,_ a rush of breath, and it seemed almost to last forever, the two of them so close, the air so close around them. A bead of sweat rolled languid down his spine and his hands slipped on the back of Cas’ neck, in his hair, roving.

Cas’ hips started to stutter, legs shaking, hands pulling gently at Dean’s hair, at Dean’s nape, where his head was bowed. Dean pressed down on him when he felt it; wanted all of him, wanted absolutely nothing less.

Cas finished inside him and gripped him so tight Dean almost couldn’t breathe, chests pressed together tight and slippery with sweat, Dean’s cock pressed between them.

Dean realised too late that he was shaking; he couldn’t parse it, the reason why everything seemed suddenly overwhelming, how his body felt full, and the world had narrowed to a single point, the smell of Cas’ skin, how it was to have him in his arms, to be held in return.

He rose up when Cas pushed at him a little, letting Cas slip out of him, and stayed pressed against Cas’ shoulder, afraid to pull back and look at his face.

“Dean,” Cas murmured in his ear, and Dean shook his head; could feel it building, hot, at the base of his spine.

Cas touched him experimentally, carefully; delicate sweep of fingers trailing down his back, along his side, down his chest and stomach. He brushed his thumbs over Dean’s hips, murmured soft gratitude in his ear, words so bare they hardly sounded like words at all.

His hand around Dean’s cock was gentle, coaxing; it went on for hours, maybe minutes, maybe days; Dean lost track somewhere, opening his mouth wet over Cas’ collarbone, pressing his eyes tightly shut.

When he finally came he did so with a sob, the wet just another warm thing, mixing with the sheen of sweat coating their skins.

He still couldn’t pull back – Cas said his name, still touching him gently as he rocked through it, and Dean shook his head again.

He croaked and was ashamed of himself, wrung out; his skin felt flayed, as if he would look down and see himself pink and raw. Reborn.

Cas held him for so long he had no idea where it began, where it ended; he dimly registered the salt stinging his eyes, his face crumpling; the spread of Cas’ warm, capable hands across his back.

They slept together that night, curled as if in communion, Cas’ hands brushing up and down his back, up, over the crest of his skull. The night was thick as ink, and as dark; his body felt strange and tender, cocooned in Cas’ arms, in the still weight of the air in the room, breathing slow.

In the morning he woke to bright sunlight bleeding over his eyelids, cheeks tacky and stung with tears, Cas a long, lithe weight wrapped close around him.

He blinked up at the ceiling, lips hanging parted. Said nothing.

The day dawned like any other, but something had changed.

\---

When they finally found Sam, it went as it usually did – Sam embraced them, told them how long they’d been gone, what he did while they were away, which apparently wasn’t much, except search for them.

Dean wished, strangely, that Sam had chosen not to. He loves his brother, loves his devotion; but part of him wondered if Sam might have been better trying to take something for himself, in the meantime.

The sentiment, so new and strange, unbalanced him.

He is changing.

Cas fell asleep on the porch while Dean recounted their time below the surface – the things he could bear to divulge. How it was, how it _sang;_ how the light of purgatory shone strained through the nap of trees above.

He told Sam about how he was better, and Sam – thankfully – passed no judgement. Gave little words.

He listened, and Dean had missed him. He pulled his brother into his arms as hard as he could, but didn’t explain how long it had seemed, to him, to be without him.

“I was good, Sammy,” Dean told him, and passed him the coin, warmed from his palm. Sam let it sit there, and looked at it. There was a pregnant pause, and then Sam handed it back to him – folded his fingers around it, as Cas had, in that other world.

“So do it again,” he said, gaze solid and unwavering, eyes locked on Dean’s. “Do it for real, this time.”

Dean didn’t know if he could; didn’t know if he wanted to try, if there was enough time left for someone like him to be _right_ again.

But the horizon was bright as he sat on the porch with Sam, and the wooden slats rasped when he shifted. Summer was in full swing, heavy with light, heavy with life, and Dean had been held by an angel; Dean had been above and below and between the worlds, and Dean was _still alive._

Maybe in the future things would be darker; maybe loss would creep in again, as it always does, sinew soft and cloying.

Maybe Dean isn’t strong enough; maybe he’s just not who he wants to be. Maybe being something _good_ is just a bridge too far, pipe-dream, and he’d spend his life reaching for it, hand never touching down.

Or maybe this would be the thing that stuck.

“Maybe I will,” he said softly, almost too quiet for Sam to hear.

Cas stirred on the porch, cheek pressed against the floor, and Dean looked back at him; he smiled.


End file.
